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Time for the Guv to morph into Chris Christie (6/28/2011)

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The attorney general got the $600,000 in savings by cutting overtime in the agency's criminal investigation division, holding open a senior level position in its crime victim services office and not filling open positions in the agency's computer communication center, St. John said.

Van Hollen also discovered nearly $6,000 in cash that had been lying around for a decade, St. John said. The money was earmarked for a management training conference that was never held.

The agency also saved on rent at the Madison and Milwaukee crime labs, St. John said. New DNA analysts in Madison were trained in existing space, reducing rent for an expansion, and more money from legal settlements went to cover rent in Milwaukee , reducing taxpayers' cost, St. John said.

Not a word in there about not engaging in the kind of lawsuit activity of his predecessor Peg Lautenschlager. If you recall the election campaign from 2006, Van Hollen was convinced there was enough savings there to fund the needed expansion of the crime labs and Wisconsin’s branch of the War on Terror. He declared during the primary campaign that spending more money was “not the conservative thing to do.”

Upon getting elected, Van Hollen asked the governor and the state legislature for $7.7 million more in his budget. So if Van Hollen has given back to the state $600,000, then he still owes the taxpayers another $7.1 million. After all, it’s “the conservative thing to do.”

You can understand why Van Hollen would suddenly remember fiscal responsibility. In a Wispolitics.com straw poll at the Republican state convention, Van Hollen only received 24 votes in the preference for governor. Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker received 157 votes, even though the convention was held in Stevens Point and, as Blogger Mark Block pointed out, half the delegate chairs for the Waukesha County party sat empty.

Earlier this year Van Hollen told the media he was not going to run for governor next time. You can see why. What a long fall for someone who was touted as the candidate for governor when he was the only Republican to have state-wide success in 2006. Maybe if he finally caught one of those terrorists he talked about during the campaign....

James Wigderson blogs at Wigderson Library and Pub.

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