WALKER ADMINISTRATION STIFFS WISCONSIN PUBLIC WORKFORCE, SHIPS STATE JOBS TO INDIA

So what is the huge dust-up in Madison really all about? It's about the Walker administration's desire to destroy collective bargaining, of course. It's also about sticking public workers with the bill for the cost of new Republican tax cuts to business, and about Walker grabbing more power from the legislature and taking control of administrative rule-making.

But you know what else it's about? It's about a system so rotten and corrupt that while all the conservative posturing is focused on those mean, nasty labor unions that won't let Repubilcans do whatever they want, the Walker administration is busy shipping state government work to India.

In a Feb. 13 commentary in the Wisconsin State Journal (see URL in source list), Jill Hynum reported that the state Department of Health Services in January signed a contract with Deloitte Consulting involving information systems for SeniorCare among other income maintenance programs.

The eight-year contract would cover some 300,000 billable hours resulting in a total annual cost to the state in the tens of millions of dollars.

Hynum wrote that DHS could scale back the contract by adding information technology professionals to state staff and doing much of the work in-house at less cost. She concluded:

Why is DHS preapring to spend over $30 million a year on one information system when times are so tough? It won't create jobs for Wisconsin residents since most of Deloitte's workforce is subcontracted from India.

Adding insult to injury, the state plans to cut millions in services to needy Medicare seniors in Wisconsin. That money and perhaps more will go instead to an out-of-state firm that will in turn outsource most of the work all the way to another continent.

But, according to the Walker administration, it's PUBLIC LABOR UNIONS that are hurting Wisconsin's economy because state employees earn too much. Yeah, right.