by jboullion | Nov 9, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Mary Wisniewski in the Chicago Sun Times:
Illinois wants the $810 million in federal high-speed rail money that Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker has promised to reject.
“We’d love to have it,” said Illinois Transportation Secretary Gary Hannig. He said Illinois, which has already received $1.2 billion in high-speed rail funding, could spend Wisconsin’s money making further improvements to the Chicago-St. Louis corridor to add more passenger runs.
The money also could be used to build stations in Joliet and Rockford, Hannig said.
Walker, a Republican, made opposing a high-speed train line from Milwaukee to Madison a key part of his campaign against Democrat Tom Barrett. Walker objected to the state having to pay up to $7.5 million a year in ongoing operational costs.
State Sen. Jeffrey Schoenberg (D-Evanston) said he would work with other lawmakers to persuade the U.S. Department of Transportation to transfer the money to Illinois. He also would like to see trainmaker Talgo, Inc. move here. Talgo has said it can’t promise to stay in Milwaukee if the state rejects the rail project.
by jboullion | Nov 8, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Jason Stein and Tom Heldin the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Madison — Governor-elect Scott Walker reached out to a Milwaukee train manufacturer Friday, seeking to keep its operations in the state long-term as he advocates for stopping a passenger rail project involving the company.
“Governor-elect Walker is reaching out to leadership at Talgo to encourage them to stay in Wisconsin,” Walker spokeswoman Jill Bader said Friday.
A spokeswoman for Talgo, the U.S. unit of the Spanish firm Patentes Talgo, said that Walker told company officials that his decision to stop a proposed Madison-to-Milwaukee passenger rail line is “not final.”
Walker, a Republican, campaigned on an unambiguous promise to end the passenger rail line, funded with $810 million in federal stimulus money, which he has called a boondoggle. Bader said Walker was not backing away from that promise.
This week, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, a supporter of the project, halted work on that line temporarily after Walker’s election.
That has thrown some doubt over jobs at Talgo, which is building two trains for an existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago rail service and had plans to build two more for the proposed Milwaukee-to-Madison line. The company has a site at the former Tower Automotive property.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore said Friday during a briefing in her Milwaukee office that other states are clearly in line to take the funds if Wisconsin turns them down. A lack of public transportation is a significant cause of the high unemployment in the central city because residents there can’t reach jobs in the suburbs, she said.
“Walker has a record of being anathema to public transportation,” Moore said.
New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo made a pitch for the rail money that the governors-elect in Wisconsin and Ohio have pledged to reject. He sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asking that the roughly $1.26 billion be redirected to pay for a rail project that would connect New York City, upstate New York, Toronto and Montreal.
“High-speed rail is critical to building the foundation for future economic growth, especially upstate,” Cuomo said in a statement. “If these governors-elect follow through on their promises to cancel these projects, a Cuomo administration would move quickly to put the billions in rejected stimulus funding toward projects that would create thousands of good jobs for New Yorkers.”
by jboullion | Nov 5, 2010 | Uncategorized
From a blog post by Tom Content on JSonline:
An air emissions permit to operate the Valley power plant in Milwaukee should be renewed, the state Department of Natural Resources has concluded.
That finding, concerning an air emissions permit first issued in 1998, will be the subject of a DNR public hearing Thursday in Milwaukee.
Environmental groups sued the DNR this summer in Dane County Circuit Court because it had not issued an updated permit for the project.
That suit is now on hold while DNR proceeds with work on the air permit.
The Sierra Club and Clean Wisconsin, joined by several other groups, are seeking that DNR become more aggressive in requiring less pollution to be emitted by the We Energies plant, located in the Menomonee River Valley.
The Journal Sentinel reported this summer that the plant is allowed to operate under more lenient standards in part because of its age and in part because it wasn’t required to install modern pollution controls at a time when We Energies was moving forward to install those controls at other, larger power plants.
by jboullion | Nov 4, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article by Clay Barbour in the Wisconsin State Journal:
Some $800 million in contracts, a series of difficult legal hurdles and a struggling economy will not stop Governor-elect Scott Walker from doing what he promised on the campaign trail — stopping the train.
Walker, a Republican, soundly defeated Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for the right to replace outgoing Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. He takes power Jan. 1.
The Milwaukee County executive ran a strong campaign on a series of checkbook issues, vowing to cut government spending by $300 million, bring 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin and roll back $1.8 billion in tax increases approved last year.
But few issues so caught the public’s attention as Walker’s promise to stop the $810 million Milwaukee-to-Madison passenger rail project, a project officials hope one day will link the Midwest, from Chicago to Minneapolis.
Wisconsin transportation officials earlier this week signed a deal to commit the state to spending all of the $810 million in federal stimulus money on rail project, a significant move because it makes it harder for rail opponents like Walker to stop it.
Many political experts felt Walker was simply using the train to gin up voters, never truly intending to bring a halt to the project — a move that could end up costing the state millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Some assumed Doyle rushed the contracts through in an effort to tie the governor-elect’s hands.
But on Wednesday, Walker reiterated his intention to stop the train and said he believed there was a way to do it without the state losing its shirt.
by jboullion | Nov 2, 2010 | Uncategorized
From an article in the Wisconsin State Journal:
Transportation officials have confirmed that Wisconsin and federal administrators have signed a deal to commit the state to spending all $810 million of its federal stimulus cash on a proposed Milwaukee-to-Madison high-speed rail line.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on its website Monday night the agreement was reached just days before today’s election.
The deal is significant because it could make it harder for opponents to stop the controversial project, which officials originally hoped would one day connect the Midwest, from Chicago to Minneapolis.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, the Republican nominee and gubernatorial frontrunner, has said repeatedly that he wanted to stop the rail project, even if it meant repaying hundreds of millions of dollars to the federal government. On Monday, he called the deal “raw political power at its worst.”
But Cari Anne Renlund, executive assistant to state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi, said Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration was only following its original plan for the project to create construction jobs as soon as possible.
“Essentially what this means is that we’ve satisfied the federal government that we are ready to start the construction phase,” Renlund, the No. 3 official at the state Department of Transportation, told the State Journal. “We can put people on the job and pay them.”
