Holy payback! Gov. Scott Walker wants a 68% debt service increase to pay back transportation debt!

That’s an amazing increase and is even 21% more than the Wisconsin Department of Transportation asked for!

In FY10 and FY11, WisDOT will pay about $151.3 million in debt service; the agency asked for $287.1 million for 2012 and 2013; and Walker is recommending an astonishing $346 million.

Walker’s proposal is $194.6 million more than the 2010-11 figure and $58.9 million more than WisDOT sought.

Why this big increase? We don’t know. Walker’s proposed budget doesn’t tell us other than to say there is a re-estimate. For what? By whom? Yes, he is up to his old county tricks of withholding important information from the public footing the bill.

And Walker is pumping money into big road and unnecessary freeway expansion projects — the Zoo Interchange and North-South I-94 here in Milwaukee County — while cutting transit, local road aids and the money the state pays counties to take care of state roads. Transit, under Walker’s proposal, will move to the general fund, where it will compete for resources with education and social services, which Walker is also cutting. He also proposes to grab a share of sales tax revenue, which traditionally funded things like education and social services — and use it for transportation instead.

Who needs decent schools at a time of increasing global academic competitiveness when you can have wider roads in a time of declining oil resources instead?

Maybe all this laying of concrete is Walker’s tribute to himself: cement head, cement state.