Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Walker took 11 weeks of personal time in 10 months

Wisconsin Job-killer Gov. Scott Walker isn't exactly the hardest working man in show biz. The Wisconsin Reporter reveals he took 54 personal days in the first 10 months of 2012. That's 11 weeks -- well, okay, minus a day -- of personal time off

Here's the requirement for him to have to take a personal day: Work fewer than 90 minutes on official state business. So if Walker puts in 91 whole minutes, he can take the rest of the day off and not have to claim a personal day.

We don't even know how much vacation time he took.

He "earns" $144,423 a year plus benefits.

Other government workers in Wisconsin don't enjoy such rich bennies. You'll recall the uproar when Walker cut retirement and health care benefits for most government workers. Politifact reports, 
In a separate move -- now known as Act 10 -- he also sharply curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, mandating a pension contribution that equalled 5.8 percent of salary in 2011, and allowing districts to collect higher contributions from employees for health care costs.
But never mind the unfairness of Scott Walker's employment benefits. The slow grinding John Doe investigation into corruption at Walker's former office -- Milwaukee County Executive -- suggests he may be using personal time to raise money for his criminal defense fund.

As the peerless Charles Pierce writes at Esquire:
The John Doe investigation in Milwaukee has been Banquo's ghost flitting around Walker's political future almost from the moment that he was first elected in 2010. It is that most dangerous of all grand-jury investigations — patient, thorough, and damned near leakproof. (I was in Milwaukee last week and, while there was some chatter downtown about something big breaking in the case, nobody really knew what it was.) This case has been built slowly and methodically, and it is beginning to produce results in the way the most dangerous grand juries do – a little at a time, in a fashion whereby people higher up the food chain first become collateral damage in other cases, and then wind up in hip-deep in the fudge themselves.
What a shame that would be.