Wow. I was skeptical at this claim, but it appears to be true?
* http://drudgeretort.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/walker-to-make-...
* http://wisconsin.onpolitix.com/news/36834/governor-walker-an...
Bizarre.
As far as Koch Industries they specifically said (in the 2nd link you posted) that they have no interest in the power plants.
Any government bidding program is going to take several years to complete. It's going to involve a committee to evaluate the bids. That committee will have to be formed meaning there will be politics involved in deciding who is on the committee. Once that's all done you'll have to put out the request for bids and wait for those bids to come in. Then comes the evaluation by the committee and so on.
Again I wouldn't disagree if you said he's acting rashly but it's consistent with his public stance to push these things quickly.
It doesn't have to be that, either. A fixed, short to medium time frame will do for bids; it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
And honestly, perhaps he's 100% on the up and up (like every other politician), and Koch Industries is honest to a fault (like so many other corporations) and really DOESN'T want utilities at potentially criminally low prices; this non-bid clause give a huge appearance of impropriety. With nothing else anywhere to show that there isn't any, would it not be prudent to either explain his actions or change them accordingly?
I doubt this. Governments routinely sell assets, such as property seized in criminal cases, tax foreclosures, and surplus equipment at auction and it doesn't take years. There doesn't seem to be anything about the proposed sales in Wisconsin that would require a long procedure.
Paul Collier, author of the "Bottom Billion", said poor countries get screwed for their resources because they don't put them up to bid. He even said the British government valued certain frequencies at 2 billion, but they later sold for 20 billion during bidding, so it's better for all governments to auction assets instead of pricing them or giving them away.
Unfortunately, Walker seems to think that experience is an instruction manual.
No one's saying it was a bad decision to build the infrastructure. The the state only has so much money and this is taking more of it every month.
Why is there a no-bid clause? Should the government not be obligated to try and get the best price it can on a major property sale?
The no-bid part just reeks of corruption - there's no solid reason to have it there. If someone bids ten dollars for a power plant and nobody else comes forward with a better bid, so be it, but at least the process needs to be competitive and transparent.
In other words, "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good."