MADISON – Having deflected any responsibility for the crises his reckless mismanagement has caused at his mental health complex, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker Thursday scored a shabby victory by winning a censure against one of his critics.
Scott Walker and his allies have been working for the censure since it was revealed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Walker’s disastrous policy in which the sexual assaults of female patients were accepted as a “trade off” to keep male patients from being violent. Probes into the complex are ongoing.
“I’m going to be the only Milwaukee County employee punished in any way, shape or form for the people who were raped at the complex,” the critic was quoted as saying after Walker allies won the censure.
Milwaukee County taxpayers already are footing more than $200,000 in legal costs to spare Walker and his cronies from lawsuits – but not to bring safety and relief to the patients at Walker’s troubled mental complex.
Walker himself has dodged questions at the complex, where his own staff sees a $14 million budget shortfall headed into next year, where various federal, state and county probes are underway and where chronic short staffing may be leading to more problems.
“Scott Walker and his pals may be doing a victory lap having revenged themselves against a whistleblower, but the real losers are the patients of Walker’s mental health complex and any chance of Walker ever facing any real accountability for his reckless mismanagement ofMilwaukee County,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday.
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