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Meeting in closed caucus, Assembly Republicans decided not to bring to a floor vote a bill that would have merged Wisconsin’s State Elections Board and State Ethics Board into a Government Accountability Board with greater investigative and enforcement ability.
Given the fact that five legislative leaders — both Republicans and Democrats — were recently convicted of campaign-related ethical violations, it seemed as if the time to create a more effective ethics watchdog was at hand.
Members of the Wisconsin state Senate thought so. They voted to pass Senate Bill 1, the ethics reform proposal, by a
28-5 vote last year.
Five Republicans voted with all Democrats to take up the bill. But even though they had a 53-43 majority, supporters fell 21 votes short — because it takes a two-thirds vote to force a bill out of a committee — in this case the Assembly Rules Committee — where it is being bottled up.
State Rep. Mike Huebsch of West Salem was among the GOP leaders who contended the Government Accountability Board was not needed.
State Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, supported the new board.
“Polls show the public has lost confidence in its government at both the federal and state levels,” Shilling said. “Fighting for politics as usual and claiming current laws are already strong enough won’t restore confidence. The system is clearly broken, and today this Legislature went out of its way to not fix it.”
She’s right. It was a missed opportunity.
Legislators did pass some ethics bills. They will require candidates for partisan state offices to file reports of their campaign finances more often than now required. Another new initiative will prohibit employees who take leaves of absence to campaign from receiving state-paid health care during those leaves.
But they could have done much more.
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