With all the talk about slashing government spending, you'd think the Department of Corrections would be part of the conversation. But Gov. Scott Walker has had little to say about the department, which at $2.5 billion was the third largest expenditure in the 2009-11 budget.

But he's had a lot to say about it in the past.

In 1999, I talked with Walker, who was then a state representative and the chairman of the Assembly Corrections Committee. Walker had just introduced a bill that would privatize state prison operations. He also introduced a bill that would have opened up Wisconsin to the free market for inmates by allowing private corrections companies to open prisons in Wisconsin to house inmates from other states.

But with a Senate controlled by Democrats and opposition from Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, the bills went nowhere.

An e-mail this week to Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie asking what the new governor's plans are for corrections went unanswered. But with a Republican sweep of the Legislature, you can expect big changes in the department.