Walker's no-bid contract to donors rates no coverage in hometown paper

Do you remember how crazed the Republican radio talkers and their blogging buddies were when they thought the Journal Sentinel wasn't giving enough attention to the Doyle administration's awarding of a contract to Adelman Travel?

To put it delicately, they went apeshit, with cries of double standard, whitewash, liberal media conspiracies, and who knows what else. The state's biggest newspaper wasn't covering the story, which McSykes & Co. saw as a major scandal.

The "scandal?" Doyle's administration had given a contract to a company whose CEO is a Doyle donor, and who gave to Doyle's campaign both before and after the contract was awarded. The firm that came in second said the process was fair, but after enough media coverage changed its mind and complained.

That brings us to yesterday's Associated Press story on a contract awarded by the Scott Walker administration in Milwaukee County.

It's a $250,000 contract, awarded without bids, to a company whose executives gave money to Walker's campaign before and after getting the contract. In this case, Walker himself signed off on it. (Doyle did not see, authorize or approve the Adelman contract.)

The Journal Sentinel did not run the AP story on Walker at all. Not only was it not on the top of the front page, where one of several Adelman stories ran, but it was not on the back page, not in the Metro section, not on the obituaries page. It was spiked.

So let's review the AP story, which begins:

Walker OK'd no-bid contract for donors' firm

County executive potential Doyle rival

BY RYAN NAKASHIMA
Associated Press

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a potential gubernatorial rival who slammed Gov. Jim Doyle for taking campaign donations from a firm that won business from the state, himself approved a $250,000 no-bid county contract for a company run by campaign donors, records show.

Walker approved the contract to provide eight beds for mental health patients awarded in December 2004 to Bell Therapy, a subsidiary of Milwaukee-based Phoenix Care Systems Inc., a county official confirmed.

Campaign finance records show Phoenix executives donated $2,375 to the Friends of Scott Walker campaign from 2002 to 2005, including $1,475 in the year the company received the contract. Two donations were made Aug. 26, 2004, four months before the deal was awarded.

Walker told the AP he did nothing wrong.

Phoenix CEO Leonard Dziubla said any connection between campaign donations and its contract was a "magic leap." "It's a personal contribution and I believe in his philosophy," Dziubla said.

Walker faces U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Green Bay in the GOP primary to take on Doyle in next year's election and has said he would "clean up state government." He has criticized a state contract for airplane tickets worth an estimated $750,000 awarded to Adelman Travel in March after a top company executive donated $10,000 to Doyle's campaign. A member of the Adelman board donated another $10,000 to the governor after the contract was awarded. Local, state and federal authorities are reviewing the donations.

"There's absolutely no similarities between what happened with the Doyle administration and what happened in this particular case you're referencing," Walker said.

Walker's right. There is no similarity in the two cases because Walker didn't even ask for bids before giving this contract to his campaign donors.

There is another contract involving the same firm which didn't make the AP story, and which raises even more questions. It is more complicated, in a way, than the no-bid contract - so maybe the Journal Sentinel needs more time to work on it. But I doubt it, since the newspaper has a history of covering up for Walker at worst and giving him the benefit of the doubt at best.

Cory Liebmann, on his Eye On Wisconsin blog, is the one who did the investigative work and blew the whistle on both contracts. Here's his description of the other one:

In 2004, Phoenix Care Systems and seven other companies went through a bidding process for a Milwaukee County contract. During this same year two Phoenix executives gave to the Walker campaign (pages 1 and 2). Five of the seven companies competing with Phoenix scored higher than them, yet Phoenix ended up getting the contract (Scored pages 1, 2, and 3). Phoenix was chosen for the contract less than three months after the two executives gave their last gifts of the year to Walker. This was no small contract (remember the Adelman contract was only $250,000). The Milwaukee County contract that was awarded to Phoenix was for $1,248,112!

You can get more detail from Eye On Wisconsin here.

It appears you are unlikely to get them from the Journal Sentinel.

(You might want to e-mail the managing editor, George Stanley, at gstanley@journalsentinel.com and ask why. He seems eager to answer Jessica McBride's questions about coverage. If he answers yours, please let me know what he says.