Another Doyle Scandal? UWM Dorm Project “Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test”

From Milwaukee Magazine, Bruce Murphy’s column outlines what may well be another in a long line of Doyle scandals.

Quietly and cleverly, a new project is being created on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. Lots of strings were pulled to make this happen, involving at least six different government entities. Yet there have been no public bids and little public scrutiny of the development, even as companies that donated to Gov. Jim Doyle were chosen to build it. The whole thing doesn’t pass the smell test.

The new project is a six-story dormitory for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students at North Avenue and the west bank of the river. To oversee the $23 million development, UWM has created a new real estate foundation, a private nonprofit that in turn operates as an arm of another private nonprofit, the UWM Foundation. That makes the new dorm project twice removed from UWM.

[Update:]

Murphy has more on this in a later column.