Repubs defend rebid of Prism contract

UPDATE: This did make the paper, but only after Doyle repeated Roessler's comments. Unlike the original story about the claims being made in the legal case, which ran on page one, the defense ran on page B5. Jay Bullock comments.

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I must have missed this story in the newspaper. It's from WisPolitics:

Two Republican members of the state Building Commission defended a decision to re-bid a project at UW-Milwaukee, which resulted in a lawsuit by the firm that initially won the work.

Prism has filed a lawsuit seeking $5 million in damages, claiming it “was not politically popular with the person who made the key decision” on the Kennilworth Building project. The suit accuses former DOA Secretary Marc Marotta of engineering the second bidding process.

But Building Commission member Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, said she wanted to make clear it was the commission’s decision to re-bid the contract.

“It was our decision,” Roessler said. “We were dissatisfied with the initial process.”

Fellow commission member state Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, seconded Roessler’s comments.

A group whose members donated to Gov. Jim Doyle’s campaign won the contract during the second process.

Oh, that's right, I did read the last sentence of that story before.