Wisconsin: WEDC backed firm after learning state money was for luxury car debts
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/wedc-backed-firm-after-learning-state-money-was-for-luxury-car-debts-b99525593z1-309866451.html
Madison — Officials at Wisconsin's top jobs agency sought federal tax incentives for a failing Milwaukee business for a year after being told that the owner was seeking the money to pay off business debts such as the leases on luxury cars. Officials at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. worked to get that federal help for Building Committee Inc. even though a $500,000 loan it had given to the company had gone sour within months and the owner of the firm had provided false information to the state.
Top officials in Gov. Scott Walker's administration pushed to get Building Committee the initial loan and worked to get more for the company. But the jobs agency had to pass on giving the company more funding from state taxpayers after finding numerous problems with the firm and being told that owner Bill Minahan was promising some of this second proposed loan to pay a leasing debt on cars such as a 2010 Maserati and a 2011 Nissan 370Z luxury sports car.
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WEDC officials' alarm didn't stop them from persuading three counties to allocate $4.5 million for Building Committee from a federal program meant to spur energy conservation, according to hundreds of pages of emails and other documents recently released under the state's open records law. Those federal incentives were never used because, even with the subsidies in hand, Building Committee was unable to get the financial backing it needed to proceed with its project.
WEDC officials never told those counties about the concerns that had made them email each other with statements like "Yikes!" and "I can't believe we are actually going to do this" about earlier proposed help for Building Committee. "I would hope that when you get a call from a Maserati dealership asking that taxpayer funds be put forward in order to pay off a loan for a Maserati, that the leader of the organization would issue a cease-and-desist order to stop any more dealings with the organization. That's not what occurred," said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha), who sits on the WEDC board.
