Walker administration interviews woman for job filled three days earlier by Cynthia Archer

From the files of “conservatives are far better at campaigning than they are at governing” comes this gem:

Three days after Cindy Archer was to have started her job as the legislative liaison at the state Department of Children and Families – and while she was already being paid sick leave for it – the agency interviewed someone else for the same job.

Department officials did not fully explain why they interviewed another person to be the legislative liaison. They did not respond to a question asking if they expected Archer to stay in the job for long.

According to documents released through an open records request, Cynthia Archer was appointed to her position in the Department of Children and Families without ever having been interviewed by Children and Families Secretary Eloise Anderson. As the secretary of the Department of Children and Families, Anderson is responsible for appointing someone to the post filled by Archer, but due to Archer having been named to the position by Gov. Scott Walker’s administration Anderson never had the opportunity to interview Archer.

Three days after Archer started in her new position with the Department of Children and Families, Secretary Anderson interviewed Republican operative Heidi Green for the job of legislative liaison. But Green expressed shock when she learned weeks later that she had been interviewed for the legislative liaison position that had already been filled with Archer.

Welcome to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, where department heads don’t get to interview and fill vacant positions in their own departments but instead are forced to take whatever warm bodies are hand-picked by Scott Walker for those positions.

Under Scott Walker patronage is back, and Wisconsin is the worse for it.