Twenty months after Congress passed a bill that rained $2.53 billion down on Wisconsin, the governor’s office in sole charge of administering the funding, as well as legislative audit and budget officials, have almost no idea of how all that money is being spent.
Nine months after state Legislative Audit Committee members called for a comprehensive audit of the spending, the Legislative Audit Bureau has so far produced two audits that scrutinized a tiny fraction of the spending. In both studies, the LAB concluded that local and state agencies have collected and analyzed so little data that it’s impossible to know who is being paid for what.
And from what state Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) has been told, the LAB has no plans for a deep dive that might show some of the staggering waste, fraud and abuse that has already shown up at the federal level, as the Badger Institute has reported.
“This administration (Gov. Tony Evers) is just not sharing the information with us,” Born told the Badger Institute. “These two smaller audits show us there’s a lot to be concerned about. I’m just as frustrated that the administration doesn’t want to share it and the mainstream media doesn’t want to report it.”