CRG giving Walker “hero status” for increasing county spending by 6%?
Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) is running radio ads right now against a couple members of the Milwaukee Board of Supervisors, one of whom who earlier this week voted against the Board’s budget.
Despite her vote against the budget, Patricia Jursik is apparently being targeted because of her support for spending in the past. Theo Lipscomb voted for the board’s budget and backed a local sales tax increase to fund transit and parks that passed in a referendum last year.
There’s another reason, I suspect, for these attack campaigns: both of these Supervisors have been vocal critics of CRG and their thuggish tactics, one calling them outright ‘bullies’ and the other inconveniently pointed out lies and inaccuracies in CRG radio ads back in October.
I think these two quotes from CRG frontman, Chris Kliesmet say it all:
“At the end of the day, [supervisors] have to do what they are told, not what they feel like doing,” said Kliesmet. MJS 11/11/09
“If they are not willing to do that, you use the power of the electorate to see that they will,” Kliesmet vowed. “That has been our modus operandi.” MJS 10/12/05
If CRG actually was FOR responsible government and not merely a front group pushing Scott Walker for governor, they would have come out guns blazing against Walker’s 2010 ‘credit card’ budget, which actually INCREASES spending from 2009 by 6.3% — twice the rate of inflation.
As pointed out by Eye on Wisconsin: From 2003 to 2010, Walker has increased county spending by 35%, and raised the levy 18% — that’s a $40 million dollar increase.
But then again, what can you expect from a group created to get Walker elected and push his policies at any cost?