The Governor's Black Friday

Governor Doyle must have been in a serious Friday funk last week. His office put out two press releases Friday that completely struck out.

First, the Governor’s office put out a release announcing the filing of the state Race to the Top application. The state put together a solid application hoping to be one of the lucky 15 states to get some federal, one-time dollars for education. That is a good thing.

What isn’t so good is the Governor’s Don Quixotic obsession with the mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public School district. Somehow a positive press release about bipartisan state efforts to get millions of dollars for education devolved into the Governor’s obsession with mayoral takeover of MPS.

In the second to last paragraph of his press release, he buried an attack on Democratic lawmakers for not lining up to jump the cliff with him on his, thus far, inadequately proposed plan for Milwaukee public schools. Does the Governor really believe he has lined up enough Republican votes for passage? Not from what I hear.

Governor, remember it was you who launched an inadequately laid out plan without the forethought of allies or a direction you were going. If there is fault to assess, that is where you should look. Perhaps you need to reassess the launch and execution of your “plan” for mayoral takeover.

Also of note was the media release sent out at 4:34 pm on Friday announcing the Recovery jobs report. Yes, I will say it again: The Governor announced 44,000 jobs retained or created through recovery dollars at 4:30 pm on a Friday, the black hole of media times to get coverage. Doh!

It’s time to get back to the legislative Democrats’ #1 priority – jobs. I think the Mayoral takeover plan in its current form is on self-induced life-support.