Walker to Give State of the State Address Tonight

1/25/12 – Governor Scott Walker will give his second State of State address tonight and it comes under much different circumstances than his first 358-days ago. That came right after he and a new Republican legislative majority were swept into office — and they had already achieved victories by passing a first round of job creation bills. But tonight, Walker will return to a state Assembly chamber that’s been by rocked by protests ever since the Republican governor proposed a virtual end to most public union collective bargaining. His signature legislation was introduced 10 days after that first State-of-the-State address. And it divided Wisconsinites so much that it prompted hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions for an unprecedented gubernatorial recall. Tonight, Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie says the governor will focus on the property tax savings his union law created — plus his efforts to reduce fraud-and-waste in state government. But there might not be a lot of talk about jobs — especially after the U-S Bureau of Labor Statistics said yesterday that Wisconsin was the only state in the country to lose private sector jobs in each of the last six months. Werwie says there have been bumps along the way, but the state is heading in the right direction.