

John Torinus.

A CEO and former business journalist says Gov. Scott Walker is showing a pattern of "government by surprise" by making big policy changes without putting them in the public eye during his gubernatorial campaigns.

"I wonder if voters would have voted differently if they knew that Governor Walker and the GOP Legislature were going to mess around with our two biggest assets in the state," said John Torinus, chairman of Serigraph and former newspaper editor and columnist. "There was not much indication in the campaign that we were going to fundamentally reorganize how we manage natural resources and fundamentally reorganize how we manage our great university."

In the last two weeks, Wisconsin politics has been dominated by the ongoing right-to-work legislation, cuts to the University of Wisconsin System budget and big changes at the Department of Natural Resources. None of these policy proposals were part of Walker's campaign in last year's gubernatorial race.

Meanwhile, said Torinus, the public has heard little about the campaign’s number one issue.

"I’m a little surprised that job creation, this number one issue in the campaign, has gone almost dormant," he said. "It’s almost disappeared from the rhetoric and from the substance of what the Legislature is dealing with."

Torinus said the "government by surprise" tactic ultimately bypasses public debate and violates the foundations of the Wisconsin Idea.

"It seems that there’s more of a cloistered defense approach to politics inside the beltway," he said. "(A) small group of insiders are coming up with these major policy shifts and little signal was given to the citizens of the state. That is sort of contrary to the Wisconsin Idea, which essentially means that the citizens of the state get involved in the dialogue and the strategic directions of the state."