From a Jan. 2004 (that’s a full year after Doyle took office) Wisconsin Department of Transportation memo:

WisDOT has created a multi-division team to analyze the SEWRPC (Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission) recommendations and develop a 30-year implementation plan.  The review will address key issues:

• Timing of critical pavement and bridge needs and the probable need for continued rehabilitation, even prior to and during reconstruction;

• Priority staging for corridors and interchanges, and the resulting timetable and costs for planning and environmental studies for each corridor; (Emphasis added)
  

So there you have it. Doyle did not tell the truth. WisDOT, which makes the actual decisions in issues like this, was still weighing the issue of timing a full year after Doyle took office.

For shame, Mr. Doyle.

Despite Secretary Frank Busalacchi’s denial, politics did indeed play a role in putting the I-94 North-South reconstruction and silly expansion project ahead of Zoo Interchange reconstruction.

From a May, 2004 internal WisDOT memo:

There are two key decisions that must be made shortly.  First, the proposed corridor prioritization must be approved or amended.  Staff selected these three corridors based on a number of factors.  They first reviewed analysis of safety, pavement condition, design deficiencies, and congestion.  Staff also included preliminary work already conducted as part of their analysis; as a result, the priority of IH 94 from the Illinois state line to the Mitchell Interchange was elevated.  Finally, staff considered the political and physical ease with which a corridor could be reconstructed; this lowered both the IH 94 corridor from the Marquette Interchange to STH 16 and the IH 43 corridor from the Mitchell Interchange to Silver Spring Drive. WisDOT staff requires, therefore, the Secretary’s and the Governor’s approval of these three corridors as the first to be reconstructed. (Emphasis added)

This is the second time the Doyle dudes were caught in a whopper about the Zoo / I-94 decision. Why should we believe anything they say about freeway reconstruction?

The memo is titled “First Crack at Shorter Memo to Secretary.” It was obtained many moons ago by Citizens Allied for Sane Highways, which I-co-chair.

The past few governors and the state legislature never figured that out — if you build a highway, you need to take care of it. They got the first part of that equation — highway building — down pretty good, but the taking care of it part? Not so much.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has been an agency run amuck for a long time now, enabled by Governors Thompson and McCallum and Doyle and the state legislators who perennially suck up to the road builders. Got an unnecessary interchange project in Waukesha County? The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is there for you. Want to build a sometimes interchange because of a single sporting event? Just call WisDOT.

But boring ol’ maintenance? Never mind.

The facts are rather neatly and depressingly laid out in the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s own Budget Trends report. From 1994 through 2009, spending on the three big highway-building programs — major highway development, state highway rehabilitation and southeastern Wisconsin highways rehabilitation — totaled $13.6 billion (transportation debt, most of which is incurred because of those programs, is a separate category). Spending on highway maintenance and operations totaled just $2.7 billion over that same period.

The top blue line is annual highway construction spending. The pink line is annual maintenance spending. Source: Transportation Budget Trends, 2008

Yup. In a state with an aging highway system, the state powers that be decided that only one dollar should be spent on maintenance for every five dollars spent on new construction. Worse, the spending disparity grew over that time period. In 1994 maintenance spending was about 25% of the amount spent on highway construction. In 2009, maintenance spending equaled about 19% of highway construction spending.

Republican Walker, when he was in the state legislature, cast some votes for those bad budgets. But this is a bipartisan issue. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle rejected a request for a 1% annual highway maintenance budget increases for 2009-11.

The agency has failed to “limit discharges of nutrients (e.g., phosphorous and nitrogen), determine the “reasonable potential” of a discharge to violate a water quality standard, and to keep clean waters clean,” Midwest Environmental Advocates said.

Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed budget will make matters worse by cutting 85.5 full-time jobs beyond the 300 vacancies that already exist. MEA urged the Legislature to adequately fund the DNR.

“Despite the agency’s best intentions, DNR is incapable of implementing its responsibilities with insufficient resources and staff,” says Karen Schapiro, MEA’s Executive Director. “The consequences of further staff reduction at DNR put Wisconsin’s lakes, rivers and streams at great risk. The budget cut-backs also put DNR at risk of having citizens petition the EPA to de-delegate the authority of DNR to implement the Clean Water Act. If the DNR is unable to properly implement and enforce the law, the only option may be to call upon the EPA to step in and take over the program in Wisconsin.”

Doyle wanted to make it harder and more expensive for property owners to appeal WisDOT low-ball offers for private property the agency wanted to take over to make way for transportation projects. The proposal would have limited lawyer’s fees for property owners who take their cases to court and win, thus leaving property owners hugely wronged by WisDOT with the prospect of large lawyer bills for taking on the state.

Ald. Jim Bohl came up with an idea that will increase funding for street repairs by, in a roundabout way, increasing property tax rates for non-city units of government like the county, school district, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

Bohl wants to use TIF district funds to pay for street repairs. TIFs are an economic development tool that allows municipalities to borrow to make improvements in an area, then use the new property tax revenue generated through the improvements and subsequent private development to pay off the loan. The borrowing municipality — in this case, Milwaukee — gets to use all of the new property tax money to pay down the loan instead of distributing the revenue to other taxing units as is customary.

Bohl’s idea — received warmly by several other aldermen — is to increase project costs within some or all of the city’s 48 TIF districts and use the extra money to fund street repairs outside of the districts, but within a half-mile of their borders, something state law allows. The city gets to keep the money generated by the TIF a little longer to pay off whatever the street work costs.

The other taxing units still need to collect the full amount of their levies and other property taxpayers simply will have to come up with more money to make up for the amount the city is withholding — they will, in short, be taxed at a higher rate because of the city’s keeping the TIF funds to pay for street repairs.

Yes, the streets really, really need fixing and Bohl is at least making an effort to get the damned streets fixed. Unless I’m really missing something, though, Bohl’s plan essentially would force other units of governments to put the cost of the street projects on their tax levies. This does not seem like a development likely to foster goodwill and cameraderie amongst all those starving local units of governments who can barely cover their own expenses.

Road-builders pouring concrete and money on the ground all over the state are having a good chuckle, though. No starvation worries for them. They’re eating well at the state trough.

Doyle accepted a WisDOT budget request to limit legal fees a court can award to lawyers who represent property owners who successfully claim that WisDOT shortchanged them in the amounts the agency offered for property. The governor  is proposing that attorney’s fees in litigated compensation cases be limited to one−third of the difference between WisDOT’s offer and the court-awarded purchase price, except that if one−third of that difference is less than $5,000, the amount of attorney fees included in litigation expenses may not exceed $5,000.

The limits would apply when the court-awarded sales price exceeds the the WisDOT offer by at least $700 and at least 15 percent.

WisDOT made it clear, in its original budget request, that its intent was to discourage lawyers from representing property owners.

“Litigating land purchases consumes more time and resources within the Department compared to negotiating directly with landowners,” the department said. “It could adversely affect the timeline of highway construction projects. Securing land can be a first step in a project and any delays can impact final completion and overall project cost.”

Doyle’s budget also would strip residents legal protections from residents who challenge government land grabs. Under current law, the Daprtment of Commerce can investigate  when the state tries to condemn and take property to make sure the state is obeying the law. If there are violations, Commerce can take the state to court. The governor wants to end the department’s ability to help the land owner.

Doyle also would kill the right of a person who loses their property to appeal to Commerce for review of his or her complaint. Under current law, Commerce can try to negotiate an acceptable solution with the agency that condemned the property. Commerce would not be able to do that under Doyle’s budget.

Finally, Doyle’s budget would kill a law that  the attorney general, at the request of Commerce, to prosecute all necessary actions or proceedings for the enforcement of the laws relating to relocation benefits.

More here.

What about the children who go to school and then go to day care? They are picked up at school by day care center vans. (A friend describes a school inundated by more than 40 vans at the end of every school day.) How will parents log those children into day care? Will they give the cards to their four-year-olds to swipe for themselves?

Doyle’s proposal appears to lack a full understanding of the day care situation in our fair city, which would not be a first for Doyle’s comprehension of Milwaukee. It is early, though, and the JS did not carry full details of the proposal so perhaps there already exists some sort of accommodation. If not, there still is time to fix glaring problems like this.