An important government reform bill is up for a vote in the Wisconsin State Assembly this week.

Senate Bill 1, which combines and strengthens the State Elections Board and State Ethics Board, is expected to come up for a vote, possibly as early as Tuesday.
This is an important bill. Both the ethics and elections boards are regarded as weak. This bill would combine them, beef up the staff and also give them the ability to conduct investigations.

Those are powers that are long overdue in state government, as the recent string of scandal trials has indicated.

Currently, former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen is on trial, accused of using staff and state resources to conduct political campaigns. This is a serious issue, and S.B. 1 deserves to pass in the form that it is now in — and not watered down.

S.B. 1 is a truly bipartisan bill, and it passed the Senate by an overwhelming 28-5 vote last November. It has been modified since then and would have to pass the Senate again if the Assembly approves it.

But Sen. Mike Ellis,

R-Neenah, who has been a consistent leader on campaign finance and other government reforms, is confident that the Senate will pass it again in its current form.

The problem is the Assembly, where there are more critics of the reform effort, and where there is a real desire by some to weaken whatever reform bill comes before it.

Under S.B. 1, the combined Government Accountability Board would have seven nonpartisan members, appointed by the governor and nominated by four sitting state appellate judges chosen at random by the chief justice of the Supreme Court in the presence of the other Supreme Court justices.

There is an enforcement division of the new board, but under the current version of the bill, neither those investigators nor district attorneys can engage in unchecked prosecutions or investigations.

Still, the new board will be an improvement over the existing situation. It deserves passage.

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