Buzzflash: Scott Walker Appoints Political Confidante With 4 Public Pensions to $90,000 State Position

February 26, 2011- Scott Walker is against public union pensions, but he's not against pensions, for himself or his cronies.

In fact, Walker's former chief of staff at the Milwaukee County Board, Tom Nardelli, is well on his way to receiving a whopping four pensions, one of them is $30,000 a year from the city of Milwaukee.

Upon being elected governor, Walker appointed Nardelli, 66, to a state position overseeing state building and safety codes paying $90,000 a year.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:

Nardelli will be paid $90,000 in his new job. He was paid about $75,000 with the county as Walker's chief of staff.

Nardelli collects a $30,000-a-year pension from the city and another undisclosed sum from the Army, where he served more than 25 years and retired as a lieutenant colonel.

He's also eligible for a county pension of about $4,500 a year, but that won't kick in until April, when his unused vacation and personal time runs out. Nardelli will also be eligible for a state pension. If he keeps his state job for four years, he could get about $5,700 a year.

BuzzFlash used an army reserve calculator and estimated (although we may be under or over because we don't know all the details of Nardelli's service) that Walker's crony is receiving perhaps about $8,000 a year in pension payments from the reserves.

So Walker clearly is not anti-taxpayer funded pensions when it comes to his chief political confidante, who is currently receiving two pensions while earning $90,000 from the state - and who will shortly be receiving a third, and then a fourth pension when he leaves state government.

And Walker himself has a nice pension that he received from his days in the state legislature, not to mention his years heading the county board, and then a third pension will come from his years as governor. Now, although Walker, when campaigning for governor, implied that he would pay for his pension, he only was really promising to pay 11% of his salary toward the pension, the taxpayers footing the rest of the bill.

BuzzFlash noted in an earlier story on Scott Walker's increase in the salaries of political loyalists when he was chief executive of the Milwaukee County Board that he attempted to give Nardelli a $25,000 raise at a time of worker and union cutbacks. The County Board was able to stop the Nardelli increase of 26% in his salary, but not the other raises that Walker lavished on his political posse.

As for Nardelli heading state safety for buildings and other facilities, one blog critical of Walker's tenure at the Milwaukee County Board noted:

This is not a story from The Onion:

Tom Nardelli, the long-time chief of staff to then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker who served when a) a slab fell off the County-owned O'Donnell Park garage, killing one person and maiming another, b) a piece of the County Courthouse fell, c) a ceiling panel fell off the County-owned airport, injuring a passenger, d) reports were issued showing scores of millions of dollars of repairs were needed in deferred maintenance on county facilities, for which there was no regular inspection schedule….Tom Nardelli has been appointed by Walker to run the building safety division at the state Department of Commerce.

I repeat: this is not a story from The Onion.

Nardelli says that he is commuting to Madison for his $90,000 a year job, but it won't be on a high speed train, because Walker refused the federal funds for the job-building project.

Anyway, why would Nardelli want to disrupt a comfortable pension/salaried lifestyle, all at taxpayer expense courtesy of Scott Walker?

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