Obama stimulus package a hot issue in Republican Senate primary

Talk about it

The Obama economic stimulus package has become red meat in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Wisconsin.

Eric Hovde has criticized fellow GOP candidates Tommy Thompson and Mark Neumann for taking stimulus tax dollars. But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Hovde owns part of a computer services company in Virginia that got over $2 million in stimulus funds a couple years ago.

Hovde is a board member for E-Plus. He’s called himself the firm’s second-largest shareholder. His campaign said he only has less than a 15-percent share, and it’s nowhere near a controlling interest.

Spokesmen for Thompson and Neumann both slammed Hovde Tuesday.

The hedge fund manager says those two shouldn’t talk. Neumann owns solar-energy companies that got $660,000 in federal stimulus dollars, and Thompson used to run Logistics Health of La Crosse, which got over $500,000 in stimulus grants.

Thompson’s camp said he left the firm before the funding was approved. Thompson has said Wisconsin businesses should have the same chance as those in other states to take advantage of what Washington wants to offer them.

Meanwhile, Neumann’s campaign said it didn’t make sense for Hovde to criticize Neumann’s solar energy funding, becaused Hovde’s company said in 2008 that the federal government should help grow renewable energy.

State agency put Social Security numbers online

About 110,000 people and businesses that sold property in Wisconsin last year had their tax IDs and Social Security numbers posted on a state website for three months. But Stephanie Marquis of the Revenue Department said the risk of identity theft is “relatively small.”

The numbers were imbedded in a report used mainly by real estate agents, property appraisers and home price negotiators. They were downloaded 138 times during the period in question.

State Revenue Secretary Rick Chandler said internal procedures to prevent such breaches were not followed. He asked his department’s lawyers to find out why.

The report had been online since April, and it was removed Monday. Marquis said the real estate professionals who accessed the file probably didn’t know the personal information was there. To get to it, they had to click on an imbedded file.

Marquis said no systems were hacked, and no other Revenue Department tax files were affected. She said those affected would soon get letters that offer free credit monitoring for a year.

This is not the first time the state Revenue Department has inadvertently put out personal data. Social Security numbers were placed on the mailing labels of 171,000 tax forms in 2006. In another incident, 5,000 tax forms had Social Security numbers in the address panes.

Officials said neither incident resulted in any cases of identity theft. And they’ve made a number of security improvements since then.

Tags: news, wisconsin, politics