More Trouble Than Jobs At Economic Agency Walker Championed

WASHINGTON (AP) — After declaring an economic emergency, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's newly created economic development agency backed a plan to turn dirty plastic forks and ketchup-stained napkins into jobs. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation awarded $1.2 million in grants and loans in 2011 and 2012 to Green Box NA Green Bay LLC, a company that said it could produce recycled products, electricity and even diesel from fast-food waste. Nonpartisan state audits have determined that the agency doled out tax breaks, loans and grants in ways that ran contrary to its own rules and state law. Though the agency has ceased making new loans and Walker resigned as its chairman on July 12, the agency's travails are awkward for the newly announced presidential candidate. Unlike the rest of the agency's board, his adviser Eileen Schoenfeldt has direct access to the software cataloging every agency grant and loan for the purpose of briefing Walker, according to the governor's office. The Wisconsin Economic Development Agency arose out of Walker's 2010 campaign pledge to abolish the Commerce Department, which oversaw grant and loan programs amid broad criticism. [...] staff bolted during the agency's transition out of state government, and it landed in the headlines for losing track of $8 million in overdue loans and temporarily lacking authority to issue federal economic development grants. "The guidance from the governor's office was to clean things up, get rules, policies and procedures in place and hire good people who could help facilitate those things," Murray wrote in response to emailed questions. Internal emails obtained by AP and interviews with four former employees reveal continued struggles to keep track of basic paperwork or question on problematic award applications. There is no indication that anyone at the agency checked Van Den Heuvel's legal history — available at the courthouse and online — or requested documents regarding Green Box's claimed patents, either when the agency awarded the initial grant or before it offered the company relaxed repayment terms in 2014. Van Den Heuvel offered to allow a reporter to tour a paper plant in De Pere, Wisconsin, and review documents verifying its technology, though the AP declined after Green Box would not provide evidence it owned the facility and required the AP to sign a confidentiality agreement. A $2 million tax credit went to a company ultimately owned by Diane Hendricks, a billionaire construction magnate who contributed $500,000 to Scott Walker's campaign during the 2012 recall, when there were effectively no donor limits. First reported by the Wisconsin State Journal, the ill-fated loan was made to Building Committee Inc., a construction company whose owner, William Minahan, gave Walker's campaign $10,000 one day before the 2010 election. Huebsch then sought to help the company win $4.5 million in federal energy conservation bond funding — and continued their efforts after learning that Minahan had pledged agency funds to pay for a lease on a Maserati sports car. Walker has abandoned plans to merge it with a state housing and small business finance agency, and legislators in both parties have called for the organization to be stripped of lending authority.