Doyle's raiding of the transportation fund will cost Wisconsin millions

Zoo Interchange bridges need immediate replacement, inspectors say

Work on the Zoo Interchange was scheduled to start after the I-94 project was completed, in 2016, but legislators from Waukesha County pressed to move up the work in and around their districts. Doyle vetoed additional money that would have advanced the Zoo work in the 2005-'07 budget, then changed course and pushed the project start ahead to 2012.

Work on the interchange was pushed off indefinitely in the 2009-'11 budget, when Doyle and the Legislature allocated only $20 million for engineering and design, one-tenth of the amount requested by the DOT. The final plan on the reconstruction will be finished in June, but no date for construction start has been set.

"It points to the fact that we've had substantial raids to the transportation fund, and if we had proper funding we could have been advancing the projects that needed to happen on a pace that could have prevented this from happening," Stone said. "It's the equivalent of waiting to reroof the house, and ending up with a hole you have to fix."

In the previous three budgets, the governor and Legislature diverted $1.2 billion from the transportation fund and replaced some of the cash by authorizing the DOT to issue bonds. Those actions reduced the transportation funds by about $435.4 million, according to Legislative Fiscal Bureau reports.

Democrats cant control their spending, they use smoke and mirrors to "balance" the budget, now we have to pay for it, twice.