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Hold on. Wait. Stop. Let us get this straight.

As part of their lame-duck session designed to make Tony Evers a four-year lame-duck governor, the Republicans passed a provision requiring the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to sign off on deals made by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.

While their motivation was obscene, the actual policy makes sense. The idea that the WEDC can just give away millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money without any oversight from the Legislature’s finance committee is ridiculous. And that applies no matter who is governor or which party controls the committee.

But then last week outgoing Gov. Scott Walker negotiated a $28 million deal with Kimberly-Clark and had his WEDC rubber stamp it — before signing a bill taking away the next governor’s power to do exactly the same thing.

In fact, Walker audaciously came right out and said that he delayed signing the bill until after he had cut the deal. This is just the latest ugly chapter in the national campaign by Republicans to turn all of American democracy into a two-bit banana republic; national and state governments of men (and a handful of ultra conservative women) and not of laws.

Those who thought that there was any chance that Walker would go out in a blaze of class by vetoing the lame-duck bills were living on a very wonderful, peaceful, sane planet that is, unfortunately, not our own.

Walker’s $28 million giveaway will keep 388 jobs here; that’s over $72,000 per job. And the company’s commitment is only to keep them here for five years. After that they can do what they want. And, just to underscore the folly of all this, the company announced that it would close a plant in Arkansas with about the same number of workers. In other words, Walker is spending $28 million of our money so that workers in Arkansas will get the pink slips instead of the workers in Wisconsin.

It’s such a bad deal that Walker apparently wasn’t even sure that he could get it by the Joint Finance Committee where his own party holds 12 of 16 seats.

This is not real economic development. This is two-bit banana republic economic development. None of it addresses any of the underlying issues. Kimberly-Clark no doubt had internal strategic reasons for wanting to close two plants in Wisconsin (under Walker’s deal, it will still close another plant here, laying off over 100 workers). Officials called it “restructuring.” Who knows what that means but I trust a private company to make decisions that make sense for its own business. Just let them do it.

Real economic development would mean getting the basics right. We should reinvest in quality public education at all levels, in transportation and digital infrastructure and in a clean environment — all things Walker disinvested in. If we just provide the basis for job creation — an educated workforce, solid infrastructure, and clean air and water — then businesses will start, move and grow here.

The very existence of incentive programs says that we have to make up for inadequacies in the basics. And, as the Arkansas job loss demonstrates, it’s all just a zero sum game anyway. Workers in one place win (for awhile) while those in another place lose and the taxpayers get the bill for the senseless shuffle. And, in the long run, whatever “restructuring” was motivating the move in the first place will probably take over at some point and those jobs will be lost anyway.

Of course, the Kimberly-Clark giveaway pales in comparison to the massive Foxconn con deal, which will cost taxpayers at the state and local level over $4 billion. Ironically, that deal will strain the state budget for decades, making it harder to make the very investments in basics that amount to effective economic development.

With Gov.-elect Evers expressing his skepticism of this kind of thing (and promising the outright dismantling of the WEDC) and with even the Republican Legislature balking at an earlier Kimberly-Clark deal, maybe we’re finally coming to the end of this road.

Let’s hope that Scott Walker’s parting display of reckless self-indulgence will be the last we see of this kind of thing for a long time to come.

Dave Cieslewicz is the former mayor of Madison. He blogs as Citizen Dave at isthmus.com.