Thanks a lot, Jim Doyle, for one last screwing of the taxpayers of Wisconsin.
Madison — Wisconsin taxpayers will end up paying $9.7 million more for two state of the art train sets — for a total of roughly $50 million — but leave the trains with their Spanish manufacturer, under the settlement of a nearly 3-year-old lawsuit.
The settlement, which still needs to be approved in court, ends a political saga going back half a decade.
The bizarre and expensive outcome for Wisconsin — paying for a product but not keeping it or ever using it — reflects the depth of the political disagreement in which Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle signed, and then GOP presidential candidate and Gov. Scott Walker nixed, a no-bid contract with Talgo Inc. for trains from Madison to Milwaukee and then on to Chicago.
And before you say it, no, it is not Walker’s fault for stopping the project. That would have been even more expensive and thrown good money after bad. And yes, it is Doyle’s fault for committing Wisconsin’s taxpayers to a bad deal in a no-bid contract with a foreign company.
Well, not exactly “the last” screwing by Diamond Jim.
We’ll be paying for his highway-trust-fund fraud for at least another 10 years.