In the News

By: Raquel Rutledge

In an effort to determine whether there has been a pattern of overpaying contractors and other misspending by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore is calling for a review of the agency’s federally funded projects.

Saying she has “great concerns” over WisDOT’s stewardship of taxpayer dollars, Moore requested that the U.S. Department of Transportation look into the department’s expenditures of federal money since 2011.

“This oversight is critical given that both federal and state governments are struggling to properly fund needed infrastructure investments,” Moore wrote in a Sept. 28 letter to Elaine Chao, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The letter followed an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that exposed how WisDOT knowingly paid a contractor $404,250 for paving materials on the Zoo Interchange project that were not needed or supplied.

“We cannot afford such wasteful mismanagement,” Moore wrote. “This article raises serious questions about WisDOT’s ability to properly manage and protect precious federal and state taxpayer resources.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged the department’s misspending on the contract calling it “completely wrong, completely unacceptable.”

He said changes were made in the aftermath of the 2015 case to help prevent additional waste.

“There should never be a situation like that,” he said earlier this week.

The Journal Sentinel’s investigation detailed how WisDOT was using special provisions on megaprojects in the state’s southeast region that made it difficult to track spending on certain items. In at least one case, the arrangement resulted in a contractor double billing for about 1,500 truckloads of gravel, and the state knowingly paying for it.

The special provisions were used another 30 times for work on the Zoo Interchange, making it impossible for taxpayers to know if another $1.6 million was spent on work never done or materials never received.

Department officials say they have changed policies and beefed up oversight to ensure the practice has not continued.

Nobody was held accountable for the more than $400,000 in misspending on the gravel.

Some of the same WisDOT supervisors who signed off on that overpayment have key positions on the I-94 North/South project now underway in preparation for the Foxconn plant in Racine County. And several of the same contractors have won recent bids on millions of dollars worth of work. 

At the time of the double payment, the WisDOT team members handling the project said they didn’t think they had the ability to eliminate an item in the contract — although records examined by the Journal Sentinel showed they had done so previously with a similar contract.

The Federal Highway Administration withdrew the 50 percent funding it had initially allocated for the gravel, saying it saw no justification that WisDOT should pay the contractor. The federal agency also said WisDOT would need to make additional policy changes to be in compliance for future federal funding on projects.

Mark Gottlieb, secretary of WisDOT at the time, did not return phone calls from the Journal Sentinel seeking comment. He left the agency in January 2017 and has since been critical of Walker’s public comments about Wisconsin roadways.

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