Ouch. That had to sting.

Jenifer Finley, former Chairman to “Cocaine Dan” Vrakas has resigned her position but not before slapping her old buddy across the back of the head. This fall we projected that there would be some meltdown in Waukesha County if “Cocaine Dan” took advantage of many of the borrow and spend tactics from politicians he professes to admire.

Well there was a meltdown, sooner than we thought, but not in the way we thought. In an harsh letter Finley published on WisOpinion, she said, “County Executive Vrakas has made a series of management decisions that I do not feel are in the best interest of the taxpayers and that I can not be a part of.” Benign sounding enough — yes. But she clarifies by saying:

I resigned because I felt that Mr. Vrakas did not present a conservative budget. As Mr. Vrakas’ former campaign chairperson, I feel that Mr. Vrakas promised but then did not deliver a conservative enough budget to the taxpayers. Mr. Vrakas ran as the fiscal conservative in this race and I believed in him. He argued to the taxpayers that he was more fiscally conservative than County Board Chairman Jim Dwyer. As his Chief of Staff, I presented to Mr. Vrakas a series of cuts and other actions that would have delivered significant relief to the taxpayers in the budget, among them eliminating the County Board lobbyist position and a vacant project/program analyst position.

“Mr. Vrakas ran as the fiscal conservative”. huh.

So now that he’s in, Finley is alluding that he’s a RINO? (Republican In Name Only?) Wouldn’t that be something if Vrakas got in, looked at the budget and said to himself, ‘holy cats, if I cut these programs the voters will string me up next time at the ballot box’.

But Finley made what could have been an incredibly valuable point. She suggested eliminating the County Board lobbyist position. Here’s the situation — often times counties with county executives (not all of them have an exec) also hire a lobbyist that can take the execs agenda and lobby the county board. It is common but it is a terrible waste of money. On the other hand, if Waukesha County has a lobbyist for the County Board that lobbies state legislators for interests of the county, then it would make sense to have that lobbyist on board. After all, the exec isn’t kinged, s/he is elected and in most of the other counties, the County Board Chairman does the duties that Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine and Dane have come to assume is the responsibilities of the County Exec.

You can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t some sort of backbiting that Vrakas did to Finley or some personal employment promise that he changed his mind in. Finley says, “Mr. Vrakas has mishandled the management of my resignation – and he needs to be accountable as a public servant for it.”

What does that mean? Because it kind of sounds like there’s some sour grapes going on.