Another embarrassing audit for WEDC

This sure sounds familiar. Wisconsin’s job creation agency continues to have problems doing its job. A required audit of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation once again shows Wisconsin taxpayers are hardly getting their money’s worth. This has become a disappointing pattern. In the latest audit, it was discovered that the development corporation once again can’t determine how many jobs were actually created by companies that got state money and tax credits. WEDC could not verify that 14 companies which got state money actually created the jobs they said they had. In one case, WEDC gave nearly a half-million dollars to a company which not only failed to create jobs, but actually lost 17 jobs. In total,  companies which received state money to create jobs only created 34% of the jobs promised, but collected 100% of the money. That makes no sense. But it was probably inevitable, given that WEDC only tried to verify the number of jobs created by companies they gave our tax dollars to once in two years. It is time for our lawmakers to demand a better use of our tax dollars. Instead, we keep giving away the farm but are getting little in return.