Reed Hall, a Tea Party activist, Scott Walker campaign donor and the CEO of Scott Walker’s failed flagship jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, received a 50% pay raise from Scott Walker earlier this year.
The Business Journal reports that Hall was slated to make $120,000 per year when he took the full-time position in January, and accepted a $65,000 raise from Walker in February. And Hall isn’t the only WEDC employee to have benefited; despite the admitted violations of law and lack of any basic accountability measures at Walker’s flagship agency, a number of WEDC employees were awarded bonuses.
WEDC, Scott Walker’s chief job creation agency, has been plagued with scandal amid reports of bid-rigging and pay-to-play. WEDC has also been the subject of two scathing audits that showed WEDC failed to follow state law and properly track taxpayer-funded loans.
“Scott Walker is too busy campaigning for president out of state to focus on Wisconsin jobs so he’s left a Tea Party activist and an unqualified political associate with zero private sector experience at the helm of the state’s chief job creation agency,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. “As a result, Wisconsin is dead last in the Midwest in job growth and 38th in the nation overall since Scott Walker took office, yet we still don’t know what steps are in place to track a single verifiable job that has been created by Scott Walker’s flagship jobs agency. At the same time, Scott Walker is handing out tens of thousands of dollars in pay increases and performance bonuses to WEDC employees. This is a record of failure, and Scott Walker must be held accountable.”
Read more here.
