How Scott Walker Cost Wisconsin Thousands of Jobs and High Speed Rail

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Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, die-hard Republican and Koch brothers puppet, made the decision to deprive the people of his state the pleasure of high-speed rail.

Amtrak High Speed Trains
Conceptual illlustrations show six-track elevated and below-grade stations, part of Amtrak’s ambitious plan to bring high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor. Incoming governors Wisconsin governor Scott Walker said no to the project

 

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From Isthmus.com:

It’s hard to get your head around the rapid turn of events that has taken Wisconsin out of the lead for a 21st-century transportation system and plunged us into the Dark Ages.

Let’s get caught up.

In 2009, then Gov. Jim Doyle joined forces with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to convince train manufacturer Talgo to locate in Milwaukee. The city of Milwaukee invested $10 million for site improvements at the old Tower Automotive plant in a neighborhood that needed the jobs and the reinvestment. Wisconsin ordered two trains for the state-sponsored Milwaukee to Chicago Hiawatha service. In addition, Talgo had an order for two trains for use in Oregon and Washington that would also be built in Milwaukee.

Then Doyle famously secured $810 million in federal stimulus money to build higher-speed rail from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison with the promise of eventually connecting the line to the Twin Cities. And, of course, those train sets would have been built in Milwaukee too.

A year later Barrett vied for the governor’s office against Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. The train plan was a centerpiece of Walker’s campaign, in which he essentially ran against the interests of his own county. Walker portrayed the train as a boondoggle, but he was essentially using it as leverage to exploit resentment in the rest of the state against its two largest cities.

Walker won and trains lost. He quickly moved to kill the Milwaukee to Madison part of the project, but he claimed to support upgrades to the Hiawatha line. Meanwhile, Talgo was already well along in the construction of two sets of trains to serve that line. In fact, the state has already paid Talgo $40 million for those trains, and it paid another $12 million to other vendors, for a total cost so far of $52 million.

But Walker, apparently backed into a corner by extremist legislators who were even more anti-train than he was, decided to renege on even the Hiawatha trains.

So Talgo filed a claim against the state for an additional $66 million in unpaid invoices and other losses due to the deal gone bad. That claim was recently denied by the state as expected, and a formal lawsuit is likely.

To add insult to injury, in May the completed trains were unceremoniously moved from the now abandoned Milwaukee Talgo plant for Indiana, where it is possible they will become part of the Wolverine line connecting Chicago to Detroit. And, in fact, Illinois is paying for an extension of Amtrak service to Rockford, and plans are in place to also go from Rockford to Dubuque. From there it’s not hard to imagine completing the line to the Twin Cities and bypassing Wisconsin altogether.

Walker claimed that he opposed the 100% federally funded train because of the annual operating costs to the state, which amounted to around $7 million. But now the state is on the line for as much as $118 million, for which it will have received nothing at all. In other words, for the dollars the governor has put at risk, the state could have funded the new train operation for about a decade and a half.

Had Walker not been elected governor, the Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison service would have started a year ago. Sleek new trains would have been connecting us and providing economic development opportunities not just in Milwaukee but in other places along the line. A train station near Monona Terrace would be bustling and contributing to a revival of that portion of Madison’s downtown. Even more importantly, Wisconsin would have been literally on the map as the first place in the country outside of the northeast corridor to be served by new higher-speed passenger rail.

Instead, Wisconsin now ranks a consistent 37th in job creation under Walker, the Talgo plant and its Milwaukee jobs are gone, the Madison station never happened and the ancillary development around it is on the ropes, our own tax dollars are on their way to build the same kind of system in other states, and we’re still on the hook for as much as $118 million. Even if we don’t end up paying out that much, every dollar that is lost will be lost completely.

Our tax dollars were vaporized simply because Scott Walker found it politically useful to exploit hard feelings between rural and urban Wisconsin. And how exactly did it end up benefiting someone in, say, Grantsburg that Milwaukee and Madison got left holding the bag and every taxpayer in the state is shelling out millions for nothing at all?

Before this state administration can get serious about asking for more tax dollars for transportation (a cause I’m not entirely unsympathetic to) it needs to explain why we should trust that administration when it turned an $800 million positive investment in our transportation future into a $100 million liability with nothing to show for it.

Dave Cieslewicz is the former mayor of Madison. He blogs as Citizen Dave.

– See more at Isthmus.com.

About Post Author

Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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Marsha Woerner
8 years ago

And you know, it’s no longer a case of the Asians catching up with us on technology. That left us in the dust! Scott Walker is only part of the problem; we refuse to attempt anything new! The flight of Apollo 11 to the moon was the last great attempt! Yes, we succeeded. It’s time to stop sitting on our haunches and resting on our laurels!
The fear mongering of the right has taken over our country! We’ve gotten so that we are too afraid to look out the window. Consequently, the only thing we can afford to spend money on his protection – the military. And we can’t even make changes in that! We just been more and more money and ignore all different ideas.
And where does any of this get us? Were fallen way behind in medicine, humanism, equality, DEMOCRACY! At the Scott Walker’s of the US were holding us back!! And he wants to run for president!

Joe Hagstrom
8 years ago

Just as much, if not more to blame are the nuts that subscribe to the less government charade the Scott Browns of our political world shower upon them.

Illinois is going through it now. A radical cost cutter and tax cutter for the rich is in the process of gutting social programs and municipal tax shares from the budget. Just what he said he’d do and was cheered by the kook gallery. Now they are whining because social programs and money the state used to send back to cities is being kept by the state.

And worse, there were unions that endorsed Scott Brown. Is it too much to ask voters to think beyond bullshit rhetoric? Is it too much to ask apathetic nonvoters to pay some attention?

Over the next ten years the middle class as we know it will be virtually destroyed. America will still have it’s wealth but it will be in the hands of even fewer people than now. The blame will not be on my republican party but on the intellectually lazy who allow a picture of a scary black guy or Muslim, or the phantom threat of a government thug taking their guns, that vote for my guys.

Reply to  Joe Hagstrom
8 years ago

Uh Joe isn’t the Wisconsin governor Scott WALKER?

Joe Hagstrom
Reply to  rowdy62
8 years ago

Reread my reply Rowdy. Where in it do I say Scott Walker isn’t governor of Wisconsin.

I think in a wide scope Brother.

Reply to  Joe Hagstrom
8 years ago

Sorry man. I just thought the article was about Scott Walker, not Scott Brown who holds no public office at the moment, nor has he ever had anything to do with Illinois. He ran for and won a senate seat for Massachusetts, and ran and lost his bid for the senate in New Hampshire.

Joe Hagstrom
Reply to  rowdy62
8 years ago

Whoops. Glad you pointed that out cause I just sent a post to MsdMike saying Brown instead of Walker again. I broke the first rule of my republican party. When in doubt just say “Reagan.”

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