Support growing for fixing WEDC

Sometimes things get so bad, they can no longer be ignored. That rattle your car makes. That home repair project. And the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. The state’s signature job creation agency has been a mess from the very beginning. This private-public partnership was created with the lofty goal of creating 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin in its first four years. That time came and went, with barely half of the promised jobs created. But the bigger issue is not the lack of jobs, but the fact that WEDC has become the poster child for government waste. More than $125 million was handed out to companies which didn’t qualify for state help, lied on their applications, and in many cases created zero jobs, yet failed to pay the state back. The agency has been plagued by high turnover and mismanagement. Now there are signs in Madison that republicans who control the legislature may be ready to join democrats and finally do something to fix this rogue agency, which isn’t doing the job it was created to do. Ensuring that a government agency is effective and isn’t wasting tax money should not be a partisan issue. Fixing WEDC, whether through reform or creating a brand new job creation agency, should be a priority for both political parties. Wisconsin taxpayers deserve that much.