Walker 'reforms' should be tested at home

Gov wannabe Scott Walker, the only member of the Assembly besides Mark Green who was shocked, shocked to hear that Republican staffers were illegal working on campaigns, has proposed a package of ethics reforms.

My favorite proposal is term limits for state officials. Talk about an idea whose time has come and gone. Even some of the Republicans who got elected to Congress as supporters of term limits decided, once they got their, that it was a bad idea.

A close second is a part-time legislature. Even if it were a good idea, what do you think the odds are that will ever happen?

Walker, the Milwaukee County executive, thinks we should have a part-time legislature but a full-time, 19-member County Board? (Actually, he wishes there were no county board and he could jujst rule by fiat, but he hasn't proposed that.)

Maybe he should give those ideas -- term limits and part-time legislators -- a test run at home before taking them statewide.

Of course, he knows those are proposals that will never go anywhere. But they might sound good to some voters, and serve as filler in his reform package.

But, clearly, as Bob Dylan would say, they ain't going nowhere.