Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative leaders from both parties have kept their promise to make ethics reform a top priority in Wisconsin.

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, who was criticized for not allowing an ethics reform bill to get a vote on the Assembly floor in the last session, has more than lived up to his promise to make it a top priority in this session.
The bill combines the existing State Elections Board and State Ethics Board into a single Government Accountability Board with the ability to investigate ethics violations.

However, one aspect of the draft bill is troubling — the possibility of criminal fines and a jail sentence of up to nine months for any investigator, prosecutor, member or employee of the new board who reveals information raised in closed sessions.

We understand why such information should be kept confidential. All it takes is for the newspaper headlines to link a legislator’s name with an ethics violation and that legislator’s career could be over before any allegations are proven.

But the criminal penalties seem severe and unprecedented anywhere else in Wisconsin law — including in the prohibition against grand jury testimony from being revealed to the public.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, which advocates for open government records and meetings, issued a statement that said, “Imposing criminal penalties for breaking the secrecy rule would likely discourage the enforcement board from providing information about legitimate concerns or facts about a governmental body charged with investigating allegations of misconduct involving public officials. The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council considers the provision to be of questionable necessity and worries that it could prompt other governmental bodies to adopt similar penalties.”

One of the things we worry about are overreactions on the part of officials. If the penalties for release of information are so severe, there is a real possibility that people will be overcautious and reluctant to release even legitimate information.

Can we achieve the desired confidentiality without the criminal penalties? If grand jury testimony is protected without such severe penalties, can we do the same in the case of the ethics violations investigated by the new Government Accountability Board?

Those are questions that the governor and legislators should consider.

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