WDA Out

Scion of a family that has always managed to find more than one way to skin a political cat, Wisconsin's Progressive young Governor Philip Fox La Follette last year tried a new way of getting after his State's privately owned utility companies. Since Wisconsin's Constitution prevented the State from launching publicly owned utilities, ingenious Phil La Follette got four of his associates headed by Republican Assemblyman Charles Perry to charter a private corporation named Wisconsin Development Authority. Ostensible purpose of WDA, for which the La Follette-controlled legislature authorized annual grants, was to engage in "promotional and educational" work to foster municipal ownership and rural electrification. To frightened Wisconsin utility men, however, the loosely drawn charter of the "Little TVA" looked like a skilful La Follette wedge for State entry into the whole utility industry.

When Secretary of State Theodore Dammann received the first batch of WDA vouchers, totaling $109, for auditing, a group of Milwaukee taxpayers threatened suit on the ground that the State appropriation of money to WDA was unconstitutional. Mr. Dammann withheld the $109, carried the case and WDA up to the State Supreme Court.

Last week Justice Oscar M. Fritz, who with four of his colleagues on the seven-man Court was appointed by Conservative Governor Walter Kohler, handed down a unanimous decision that knocked ingenious WDA into a cocked hat. The court ruled: "The proper performance of the duties and functions delegated to the WDA necessitates the exercise of discretion and responsibility incidental to the Governmental power. . . . [It] cannot legally be delegated otherwise than to public officers."

Smarting, Governor La Toilette declared that the decision outlawed State help to any private corporation. Mr. Dammann said he would withhold a $50,000 annual appropriation to the Wisconsin State Historical Society and $150,000 in annual grants to county fairs. Announcing that he would abandon not only WDA but his plans for a similar Wisconsin Agricultural Authority to encourage dairying cooperatives, the disappointed Governor snapped: "If I understand this decision correctly, it means that Government by bureaucracy has become mandatory, displacing all so-called sovereign power."

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