Free Republic

MADISON -- The state Department of Transportation has scrapped new bids on the massive Zoo Interchange project as lawmakers put the long-delayed state budget on the back burner and focus on Foxconn incentives instead.A special session will start at 11 a.m. Tuesday, August 1st on a bill that would extend $3 billion in tax breaks to the Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn, which has pledged to build a multi-billion dollar plant in southeastern Wisconsin and hire thousands of workers. A public hearing could happen this week.Meanwhile, Wisconsin's budget is a month late. Without funding, the state DOT has withdrawn three proposals...

Stoughton — Gov. Scott Walker Thursday promised savings on the massive Zoo Interchange project in Milwaukee and urged lawmakers to release $150 million in borrowing for road projects, saying together those two steps would be enough to keep at least five major highway projects from facing delays. In other remarks Thursday, Walker said that he could appoint a new justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the end of this week and that he also favored clearer rules on which bathrooms can be used by transgender students in public schools. Walker's administration announced last week it was delaying the five...

Yes, transit in the Milwaukee region should be improved to give citizens, especially the many inner city residents without driver's licenses, better transportation options. And, yes, the state should ramp up transit aid and road maintenance even at the expense of new highway projects. But none of that means that reconstruction of the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee County should be delayed and that planning for the interchange rebuild should go back to square one, as a lawsuit filed last week seeks to do. The interchange, the busiest in Wisconsin, is vital to commerce and the state's economy. It needs the...