MacIver News Minute: DOT Returns to Wasting Money Under Lobbyist-Turned-Bureaucrat

The MacIver Report: Wisconsin This Week

Imagine hiring an industry’s top lobbyist to lead the state agency in charge of handing out contracts to that very industry. In Wisconsin, we don’t have to imagine. Just look to the Department of Transportation, where Secretary Craig Thompson wasn’t even on the job a week before he signed off on two single-bid contracts worth almost two million dollars. In his first eight months running the DOT, Thompson has approved $320 million in single-bid contracts. That’s just $12 million less than his predecessor under Governor Walker approved in two years. A 2017 audit found tens of millions in wasted taxpayer dollars thanks to single-bid contracts, doled out without a competitive bidding process. Until Thompson took over, stamping out that waste had become a crusade at DOT. But under the lobbyist-turned bureaucrat’s leadership, that has apparently come to a screeching halt. Imagine that.