CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Will incompetence be a feature of David Crowley’s time as governor?
He has already claimed that a $4-million budget mistake in Milwaukee County is no big deal. It’s less than one percent of the overall budget. We’re told there was a mistake in the way the county’s new budgeting software was programmed. A “minus” was entered in as a “plus”. Still, the idea that whoever programmed the spreadsheet didn’t have their work checked is… incompetent. Might there be other plus/minus mistakes elsewhere in the budget?
This isn’t an isolated mistake in the Milwaukee County-Crowley administration.
This is the same gang that somehow forgot to renew the county’s health insurance policy. They tell us it wasn’t a big deal; corrected in two days. Tell that to a county employee who had a medical procedure scheduled during the outage. They would have arrived at their doctor’s office only to be told that they weren’t covered.
Or consider the inmate computer-tablet program. We knew for nearly a month that inmates had figured out how to access porn and how to send threatening messages to witnesses. Weeks passed, Then finally we heard from David Crowley. No, the tablets weren’t being taken away. Software changes were being made, and new safeguards were put in place.
And as we learned last week, there’s no reason to think David Crowley will tell us what happened or what was done. Freedom of information requests about the budget shortfall show that he knew about the problem two weeks ago. He told no one… until the day after Election Day.
Running the apparatus of state government is much more complicated than Milwaukee County. David Crowley will be more dependent on more people that he doesn’t know very well. Will competence be demanded? When there are problems, will we even be told about them?
Chris Conley
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