Today Governor Doyle signed a pork-laden state budget while vetoing a couple important provisions – unfortunately he left most all the pork in place and vetoed our right to a binding referendum on whether or not we want an RTA in Dane County.  On that veto, Doyle said “I object to state mandated referenda deciding questions on local transit”.  Does that make any sense at all?  The state budget can mandate and push an RTA on Dane County but the state doesn’t dare ask us to vote on that?

Our very own County Executive, Kathleen Falk, jumped into the fray too and said she was “very disappointed” by the veto.  It makes you wonder if they’re all running cover for one another.  Falk has always been pushing for a Dane County RTA and commuter rail for Madison, that’s on the record.  She also just recently said that “We have 100,000 people driving into Madison daily for work” as justification for commuter rail.  I wonder how many of that 100,000 come from Middleton or the Town of Burke?  Those are the end points of the proposed rail.  By having Doyle veto the provision she can say all the right things about being “disappointed” but the end result is that the tax payers of Dane County still don’t get their binding referendum.

To read more about this you can check out the Wisconsin State Journal article.