He’s spent nearly four years maligning his predecessor, Tom Ament, but now Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is looking to emulate Ament’s policies.

Under Ament, public-private partnerships were developed throughout county government in an effort to control taxes. But under Ament, these partnerships with the private sector also had another angle — they were ways to enhance service to Ament’s constituency. A public-private partnership was created to run the County Museum (back when the Exec actually exercised a little oversight), another was created to run the Art Museum and yet another to oversee enhancements at Boerner Botanical Gardens. In these instances enhancements to the facilities were made to increase the amount of visitors, and to make these places both destination sites and elements of community pride.

Walker now wants to take Ament’s positive contributions and repackage them as his own. Yesterday he proposed to add coffee shops to parks. This idea has potential. Ament used the concept of amenities in parks to increase park usage as well as security. Past County Supervisors and Ament partnered with the Bartalottas to create Lake Park Bistro in Lake Park and with Alterra Coffee to establish a charming coffee house near Veterans Park by the lake. They also partnered with Starbucks to increase park usage at Red Arrow Park, the downtown home of the County’s only remaining ice skating rink.

But improvements in past administrations do not reflect what has been happening under the not so watchful eye of Scott Walker. Under Walker, the Museum partnership was less of a partnership and more of a private sector free for all. Suffering from a lack of oversight, the museum was nearly turned back over to the county because it was in danger of not being able to pay its bills. Employees were laid off and projects scaled back.

Walker would be well advised to increase oversight and to follow through on promises should he commit any county resources to these partnerships. Walker’s concept of adding a coffee shop or retail outlet to every county park isn’t going to cover the upkeep of the entire park. His recent blame game tactic of blaming an administrator for a deficited budget in the parks had more to do with Walker’s decision to underfund the parks and provide unrealistic revenue projections in their budget than anything else.

Providing a rosy revenue forecast may have gotten Walker’s parks department in trouble this year, but it is exactly the same problem that was allowed to happen with the museum.