Seven Stops Not on Tom Tiffany’s Congressional Announcement Tour

MADISON, Wis. — State Senator Tom Tiffany is setting out on a tour of Northern Wisconsin, making seven stops in his first foray as a candidate for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District. In the interest of fairness, One Wisconsin Now offered seven more stops that should be, but aren’t, on Tiffany’s introductory tour.

“It seems Tom Tiffany has left some stops off his tour,” said One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Analiese Eicher. “To make sure the whole story about who Tom Tiffany is and what he has, and hasn’t, been doing in the state legislature gets told, we have some stops to add.”

The seven additional stops offering more insight into the real Tom Tiffany suggested by One Wisconsin Now are:

1. Gogebic Taconite mine site: Amid much fanfare about jobs, Tom Tiffany introduced legislation eviscerating state laws protecting the public from corporate polluters, written by special interest lobbyists for a multi-national mining company with a spotty environmental record, to try to clear the way to site a four mile wide pit mine near the shores of Lake Superior. After Tiffany succeeded in rolling back state laws, the mining company ditched the project and created no jobs.
2. Milwaukee Bucks Arena: Tom Tiffany voted to dole out $250 million in public tax dollars to the wealthy owners of the Milwaukee Bucks to help build a new arena for them, hundreds of miles away from the state Senate District he was elected to represent.
3. Milwaukee voucher schools: While voting for the largest cuts to K-12 public education in state history, Tiffany consistently voted to pour millions more into the private school voucher program in Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin. While his votes don’t work for public school kids in the Northwoods, they were a boon for his political campaigns as pro-voucher special interest groups and supporters donated directly to Tiffany and ran campaign ads on his behalf.
4. Lincoln Hills: Despite being warned repeatedly of mismanagement, overcrowding, understaffing and dangerous working conditions at the Lincoln Hills juvenile correctional facility, Tiffany failed to act to try to help. In fact just the opposite, Tiffany voted for big cuts to the budget of the Department of Corrections. Because of incidents at the facility, Wisconsin was forced to pay out over $25 million to settle lawsuits.
5. Wisconsin Department of Revenue: You won’t find serial tax not-payer Tom Tiffany at the state Department of Revenue offices. Records show that Tiffany personally paid no taxes in at least five years and his business paid no state income taxes for 15 years.
6. His taxpayer funded lawyer/lobbyist’s office: In a deal worthy of the Washington D.C. swamp, the Republican leaders of the Joint Committee on Finance, of which Tiffany is a member, retained a lawyer who works with a contract lobbying practice to represent them in dealing with the state Attorney General. Tiffany has remained mum as the taxpayers fork over $290 per hour for a lawyer/lobbyist to represent him.
7. Foxconn: Tiffany supported the largest state subsidy for a foreign corporation in history with his vote for the desperate Foxconn legislation. Instead of investing in schools, roads and Main Street businesses in Northern Wisconsin, Tiffany is willing to potentially fork over billions of Wisconsin tax dollars to the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer with a worldwide track record of over-promising and under-delivering. The latest announcement regarding the Foxconn project in far Southeastern Wisconsin is that they will be making automated coffee kiosks, not the large screen digital displays the previous gubernatorial administration promised would reshape Wisconsin’s economy.