Republicans unveiled a bill Wednesday that would split the Government Accountability Board into two bipartisan bodies.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, released the bill, which would split the board into the Ethics Commission and Elections Commission, according to the bill.
The bill said each commission will be appointed six partisan leaders, chosen evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Reason for the change is GOP lawmakers believe the board leans Democratic during decision-making, Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin, said.
Legislators look to model state accountability board off federal commission
The GAB is a nonpartisan board that oversees state ethics laws and election administration, Mayer said. It was created six years ago, he said, combining the previous ethics and elections boards into a single body that consists of six retired judges to administer campaign finance, elections and ethics laws. The board is considered a well-functioning model of nonpartisan election administration, Mayer said.
But some Republicans disagree.
“This bipartisan approach with two commissions will allow for a vigorous debate and better analysis of the issues,” Knudson said in a statement. “We have seen that the concentration of power led staff to run amok with serious lapses in the oversight of our elections.”
Despite the passion of GOP leaders, many groups are unhappy about the change.
League of Women Voters is a grassroots, nonpartisan political organization that encourages citizens to impact public policy. Its executive director, Andrea Kaminski, voiced strong opposition against the new bill. She said the group supported the establishment of the board in 2007 because Wisconsin’s old model with two separate commissions was dysfunctional, and now it seems to her the state is repeating that mistake.
“What this bill does is undo everything that was good about the Government Accountability Board and replace it with a model that is much like what we used to have, which clearly didn’t work,” Kaminski said. “It was a proven failure.”
Kaminski praised the current board’s ability to carry out investigations without asking for money from the Legislature because it’s hard to ask the Legislature for funding to investigate somebody in the Legislature.
Mayer said the board was walking on thin ice with both parties since it started, and sometimes it was the Democrats who were infuriated by the board. Therefore, he said, it is incorrect to say the board is one-sided. The new change will most likely drag government efficiency into a swamp of partisan debates, he said, and even many Republicans realize that.
“If it’s implemented, it will produce an organization that’s gridlocked,” Mayer said. “It’s pretty clear that it’s an effort motivated by a desire to do away with a body that the party perceives as hostile to its interests.”
Many legislators are also strongly against the bill.
Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa, D-Milwaukee, described the board in a statement as “Wisconsin’s nationally-lauded government watchdog” and said the state’s priority should lie in public projects that boost state economy instead of the GOP’s partisan scheming.
“At the end of the day, instead of solving Wisconsin’s real issues, Republicans are taking another step to consolidate their power and make it easier for political cronyism and corruption,” Zamarripa said in the statement.
