Unsurprisingly, the reality is very different from the way Walker claimed.
After being county executive for eight years, he left Milwaukee County a disaster area. Some of the things he left for us Milwaukeeans to clean up included:
- Walker had cut mass transit services by more than 20%, making it harder for people to get to jobs and harder for employers to get workers.
- Walker left the parks system with almost $300,000 in needed repairs and deferred maintenance. Things were so bad that they had to close public restrooms because they were too unsafe. Worse yet, his neglect allowed a 71/2 ton slab of concrete fall of a park building and crush a 15 year old boy to death (It was later revealed that Walker siphoned off $112 million that were meant to inspect and repair the building. He needed the money to cover holes in his budget.)
- The Milwaukee County House of Corrections failed a federal audit because it was so understaffed and in disrepair.
- He lost control of the Income Maintenance Program because he refused to staff it adequately, forcing the state to take over or face a multimillion dollar class action lawsuit
- The Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex needed tens of millions of dollars in repairs and was so short-handed that female patients were frequently raped.
- Stuck the county taxpayers with hundreds of millions of debt for pension obligation bonds because he refused to pay the bills when they were due.
- Then there was the whole Walkergate thing, where he had his county staff working on his campaign instead of doing county business.
Walker's track record as Milwaukee County Executive was so dismal that the only thing that could make it look good is his record as governor.
