Doyle's Dirty Deals

Another day, another questionable dealing by the Doyle administration, another top aide implicated...

From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Gov. Jim Doyle's chief of staff met with executives of a utility that was seeking state approval for the purchase of the Kewaunee nuclear power plant, a utility spokesman confirmed Thursday - a disclosure that is to become part of an investigation into whether politics played a role in the eventual sale of the plant.

It's the first time that the name of Susan Goodwin, Doyle's top aide, has surfaced in connection with the controversy over the sale, which state regulators initially rejected. State and federal investigators are reviewing whether campaign contributions to Doyle led to a reversal of that decision.

A Doyle aide said there was nothing improper about the meeting with Goodwin.

And the next time a dirty deal surfaces, I predict that a Doyle aide will claim that there was nothing improper about it.

There is just no denying that Doyle is steeped in corruption.

I give Mark Green credit for doing his best to campaign on all the various issues important to Wisconsinites. If he wanted to, he could run solely on the need to clean up state government because Doyle's mess is so massive.

The Doyle administration is absolutely filthy, yet Doyle has the gall to cut on Green for a relationship with Tom DeLay and Halliburton. Doyle is the one who's dirty.

Of course, all parties involved in the sale of the $200 million plant would claim that everything was done properly.

...The controversy stems from a chain of events in which the commission first rejected, then reconsidered and finally approved the plant sale.

State and federal officials are investigating whether $43,650 in donations from utility executives to Doyle's re-election campaign in 2004 and early 2005 played any role in the commission's process.

Also under review is a November 2004 fund-raising event for Doyle. The morning after the fund-raiser, the commission voted 2-1 to reject the plant sale, with Doyle's two appointees on the commission voting against it.

After Dominion and the two plant owners, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Wisconsin Power & Light Co., made changes to the proposed sale in response to concerns that the Doyle appointees - then-Chairwoman Burnie Bridge and Mark Meyer - raised, the commission voted several months later to approve the sale.

The meeting involving Goodwin and Dominion Resources officials is part of the investigation or will become part of it, a source familiar with the inquiry said Thursday.

Mike McCabe, executive director of the political watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, called the disclosure significant because Doyle has always tried to distance himself from approval of the plant sale.

"The governor's office has continually said the Public Service Commission is an independent agency, and this company's business was before the PSC," he said. "Why was the company meeting with the governor's chief of staff, and why was the company donating so heavily to the governor when they had business before the PSC?

"I think, at best, it raises legitimate suspicions about the extent to which the PSC was truly independent in its deliberations on the Kewaunee nuclear power plant."

The driving force behind so many of Doyle's decisions seems to be money. The impression is that he can be bought.

There isn't just a hint of impropriety here and there. It positively permeates his administration.