UNDATED (WSAU-Wheeler News) Governor Scott Walker dismisses a Yahoo News report which indicated that he helped arrange political payback to Eau Claire billionaire John Menard. That was after Menard reportedly gave $1.5-million to a conservative group to help Walker win his 2012 recall election.
The Yahoo report said the Menards home improvement chain was awarded up to $1.8-million in state tax credits — and D-N-R enforcement actions have dropped under Walker’s leadership after Menards was fined millions in pollution cases over the last 20 years.
Walker’s office said the governor did not vote on the tax credit awards as chairman of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s board — and he was not directly involved with them. The governor’s office also rejected a drastic cutback in environmental enforcement, noting the D-N-R has used the same protocol for decades.
Walker told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter he has not engaged in any of the conduct mentioned in the Yahoo account. And with his status as a potential presidential candidate, Walker said “there’s going to be a lot of stories going forward.”
An attorney for the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the group that reportedly took Menard’s donation, said there’s “no question” the Yahoo report was a leak from somebody associated with the John Doe investigation into Walker’s recall campaign finances. Last year, a federal court inadvertently released records on its Web site for several hours indicating that Gogebic Taconite quietly gave $700,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth to support Walker. The governor and Legislature had relaxed state mining laws after Gogebic said it wanted to create jobs with a new iron ore mine. The project was recently halted due to excessive wetlands at the site.
