Progressive Thinking

When a political crime is committed, politicians should not have special privileges. Exempting politicians from the reach of John Doe investigations, making the GAB partisan and allowing unlimited corporate contributions are not “reforms” to make Wisconsin laws better.

MADISON - For Republicans in office right now, the John Doe 1 and John Doe 2 criminal investigations feel very personal. That’s because they involved their political leader Governor Walker and his former staff and groups that he coordinated campaign activity with. Those are undisputed facts. The reality though is that those investigations were not personal at all. They were not political at all. They were routine action taken against people that were believed to have broken the law. The case was made, by multiple judges, by multiple district attorneys of both parties to take action in these political crime probes.

As a gut reaction to these criminal investigations the Legislature is enacting a set of three bills that will change the rules for every politician forever. District attorney’s in this state have investigated and pursued criminal charges against politicians throughout our history. Recently both Democrats and Republicans were charged and convicted for political criminal activity.

When a political crime is believed to have been committed there should be equal treatment under the law, police, district attorneys and judges. Politicians should not have special privileges.

Exempting politicians from the reach of John Doe investigations, making the Government Accountability Board partisan and allowing unlimited corporate contributions is what the Legislature is enacting into law. It is not political to say that this is a Republican effort; not one Democrat has voted for these changes to the law. These are not “reforms” to make Wisconsin laws better, because if they were they would be bi-partisan. If there were a true interest in reforming the law it would be done with cooperation. People believe we don’t work together on anything, but in reality we do – almost every bill that gets enacted into law has support by both Democrats and Republicans.

It is only bills like these three; the ones that are true partisan agenda items that do not get broad support in the Legislature. Again I would offer I understand the knee jerk reaction to investigations of criminal activity against a leader, I think it is natural to defend someone you follow. But when we change the law, we change it forever. We change it for every politician that will sit on the Senate and Assembly floor in the years that stretch ahead, long after current political leaders are gone. These bills make it easier for political criminals to break the law and harder for district attorney’s to prosecute political crimes. That is simple fact. These bills leave fewer prosecutorial tools in the toolbox, partisan watchdogs rather than non-partisan policing and unlimited corporate contribution made legal.

These changes affect the political and prosecutorial process forever. For more information on any of these bills please contact my office at 608-266-66790 or 888-549-0027 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sen. Jennifer Shilling talks about Wisconsin’s historical bipartisan commitment to laws that protect citizen access, prevent political corruption and maintain high ethical standards in our government. In recent weeks, Republicans who control the State Legislature in Madison are pushing a package of bills that may bring this commitment to an end.

MADISON - Differences of opinion are inevitable in government. Disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over public investments, funding for schools or the fairness of our tax code are common.

Despite these differences, everyone can agree that an open, transparent and accessible government is essential to our democracy.

Throughout Wisconsin’s history, both Democrats and Republicans have supported laws to protect citizen access, prevent political corruption and maintain high ethical standards.

Unfortunately, this historical bipartisan agreement is nearing an end.

Republicans who control the State Legislature in Madison are pushing a package of bills that severely limit the ability of Wisconsin citizens to have their voices heard and hold elected officials accountable.

These bills follow the recent attempt by Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans to gut Wisconsin’s open record laws. These misguided efforts to limit disclosure of public documents were abandoned only after scores of newspapers, media outlets and citizens responded with overwhelming opposition.

Now, less than three months after the failed attempt to restrict open record access, Republicans are using an end-around tactic to rewrite long-standing campaign finance, ethics and anti-corruption laws.

The first of these bills, Senate Bill 43, was privately signed into law by Gov. Walker on October 23. This law makes it more difficult to prosecute political corruption by exempting politicians from Wisconsin’s John Doe criminal investigation laws.

A second bill completely rewrites Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws allowing corporations to contribute directly to political parties and eliminating important disclosure requirements. The sweeping changes in this bill go beyond the controversial Citizens United Supreme Court decision and will result in even more TV ads, robocalls and special interest attack mailers during campaign season.

Finally, a third Republican proposal dismantles the non-partisan Government Accountability Board which is tasked with overseeing state elections and ethics laws. The Board would be replaced with political appointees using a flawed model that encourages partisan bickering and gridlock rather than actual oversight.

Taken together, these bills make sweeping changes to many long-standing good government protections. This trio of bills is so troubling that one prominent government watchdog group recently called it “a massive, coordinated blitzkrieg on democracy and transparency.”

At a time when students, families and seniors across Wisconsin continue to face serious challenges, we should be focused on strengthening our state’s economy and improving financial security.

These misguided attacks on Wisconsin’s long-standing, bipartisan tradition of open and clean government are a threat to our democratic institutions and will only serve to further polarize Wisconsin’s political environment.

Bipartisan is not nonpartisan. When the Packers play the Vikings, we don’t want each side to appoint half the referees. Sen. Vinehout reflects on the bills in the Legislature that would change Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws, the Government Accountability Board and ‘John Doe’ process.

MADISON - “Just do the right thing,” my doctor told me. We were discussing politics. We just finished reviewing the x-rays of my new hip replacement. My doctor wanted to offer a little advice to my colleagues in the Senate.

“People want you to think of them,” he said. “They don’t want you to make decisions on what’s best for the party – whoever’s in power. They want you to make the best decision for the people.

“The problem,” I told him, “is that the interest groups are pulling the parties further and further apart. They don’t want to compromise. It’s very hard for the leaders of both parties to say ‘No’ to their favorite interest group.”

Republicans are struggling to round up enough votes to pass a bill that dissolves the Government Accountability Board (GAB) and places elections and ethics under the control of boards appointed by political party leaders. Nonpartisan judges now oversee Wisconsin’s elections, ethics and lobbying. Strongly GOP allied groups, like Americans for Prosperity and Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce are pushing the change.

Conservative groups also support bills that open the door to political jobs in our civil service system, opt political crimes out of ‘John Doe’ criminal investigations and allow unfettered and undisclosed money in campaigns.

Nonpartisan does not mean bipartisan. When the Packers play the Vikings we don’t want half the referees appointed by the Vikings and half by the Packers. They would never agree on what was pass interference. It is the same with elections. We want the calls made by judges in pinstripes, not wearing the colors of the two teams.

‘Do the right thing’ means looking at the facts and acting to fix problems that are identified but not acting to advance one party over the other ‘just because we can’.

Nonpartisan audits did indicate lapses in the GAB’s performance. Seldom is there an audited agency that does not need improvement in performance. Even the best refs make some bad calls.

Wisconsin lived through extraordinary changes in elections in the past few years. The GAB was at the center of effecting these changes. Unprecedented recall elections happened in 2011 and 2012. During this time GAB oversaw a statewide recount; a redrawing of legislative boundaries that ended in court; an on-again, off-again voter ID that also ended in court and the enactment of 31 separate pieces of legislation affected the agency.

Overall, auditors identified a dozen problems in an agency with 154 separate responsibilities. Lawmakers themselves created some of these problems. For example, auditors pointed out the agency did not complete all the administrative rules related to the training of clerks. The GAB responded that the content of the training for clerks kept changing because of 31 new laws. When the GAB asked the legislature and Department of Administration officials for additional staff, they were told, “No”.

Wisconsin has a decentralized election process: 1,853 municipal clerks and 72 county clerks conduct elections. Keeping clerks supported takes time and staff. The GAB used federal grant money to hire staff. The grant is running out. Lawmakers in the majority on the budget writing committee did not extend the positions beyond the current budget – leaving many GAB staff to wonder about their future.

In other controversial legislation, we see a similar pattern: some problems exist, but rather than tweak the law to fix the problems, conservative interest groups are pushing lawmakers to use the opportunity to tilt the system in favor of partisan advantage.

A hundred years of civil service ought to tell us the system should not be disbanded in favor of opening the door to political positions. Wisconsin’s century and a half old “John Doe” process of investigating crimes may need tweaking. But not allowing investigations of political crimes opens the door to corruption. Couple the “John Doe” bill with unfettered, undisclosed money in campaigns – another bill waiting for Senate action- and Wisconsin will return to the big money heydays of the late nineteenth century.

No voter has told me they want that result.

MADISON - Look up the word conservative. Webster’s says the word means “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.”

On today’s American political landscape, the people who best fit that definition are those who describe themselves as progressives or liberals. For quite a few decades now, the ones wearing those largely interchangeable labels have been principally devoted to maintaining the status quo. They’ve focused on keeping the 81-year-old Social Security program and 50-year-old Medicare system safe and sound. They’ve tried (quite unsuccessfully) to protect the worker rights established by the 80-year-old National Labor Relations Act and the 77-year-old Fair Labor Standards Act. They resisted changes to the 1933 Glass-Steagall Actregulating banking, only to see the law gutted in 1999, which they believe caused the collapse of the U.S. economy in 2007 and the ensuing Great Recession. Their calls to restore Glass-Steagall’s protective wall between commercial and investment banking have been ignored ever since.

Contemporary progressive or liberal thinking is firmly rooted in the 20th Century. Over the past several decades, the list of new ideas or policy innovations for the 21st Century coming from the left is a terribly short one. Even the signature Democratic policy reform in recent memory – the Affordable Care Act – was borrowed from the right-wing Heritage Foundation and was known as Romneycare in Massachusetts before it became Obamacare nationally.

This is not to say that self-proclaimed conservatives and progressives have swapped places, with conservative forces becoming the engine of innovation for the 21st Century. If today’s progressives seem stuck in the 20th Century, conservatives of this day and age seem bound and determined to return us to the 19th. They not only are intent on rolling back the New Deal reforms enacted on the heels of the Great Depression, but also are working in places like Wisconsin to demolish century-old laws ranging from civil service protections against cronyism and political patronage to prohibitions against corporate political spending that were inspired by the trauma of the economic depression in the 1890s brought on by the excesses of the Gilded Age.

A big problem in American politics today is the absence of true progressive impulses. We have conservatives who call themselves progressives, and retrogressives who call themselves conservatives. The right is determined to turn the clock all the way back to the 1800s in so many ways, and the onslaught-weary left is willing to settle for keeping us in the 1900s. Missing is a forward-looking vision for what America can and should become in the 21st Century and the drive to get us there.

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout focuses on the campaign finance bills currently moving through the Legislature that favor the rich and well-connected candidates, and open the door to “dark money” contributions where who wrote the check is unknown.

MADISON - “This bill strengthens democracy because it allows more citizens to participate,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the Wisconsin State Journal. Vos is the lead author of a bill to overhaul the state’s campaign finance law.

Wisconsin was an early leader in campaign finance reforms of 1911 that limited money in campaigns and provided “rigorous penalties” including disqualifying candidates and sending them to prison. Ironically, the effort over 100 years ago was led by legislative Republicans.

Today’s Assembly leader may advocate for more democracy, but the bill he authored favors the rich and those well-connected candidates. I fear the bill’s effect will be more negative ads, less voter knowledge, more out-of-state contributions, more centralized control by legislative leaders, and an increasingly dispirited electorate.

The bill opens the door to so-called “dark money” or contributions not reported by who wrote the check. Loopholes created in the bill make it unclear which political action committees (PAC) or independent expenditure groups must report donors and campaign spending.

Unlimited campaign contributions are allowed in a host of new areas. Unlimited donations can be made to a PAC or to two new political committee types for a recall or a referendum. This makes me concerned more money and outside groups will try to affect local elections and referendum.

Corporations cannot contribute to candidate campaigns but corporations, labor unions and Native American Tribes can make unlimited contributions to independent expenditure groups, a referendum committee or a special fund for non-candidate contribution purposes run by a political party or a legislative committee (run by legislative leaders).

In addition, unlimited dollars can be moved from a political party or legislative campaign committee to a candidate. The latter increases the hold leaders have over legislative members. The former increases the power of the political party to pick candidates.

Donation limits to candidates’ campaigns are doubled. For example, the current limit for a single individual over a four-year Senate term is $1,000. This limit becomes $2,000 under Vos’ bill.

Who benefits from adding more money to campaigns? An analysis by Nick Heynen of the Wisconsin State Journal, shows that since 2008, $17.8 million in donations that reach the maximum limit were contributed to candidates for statewide office. Almost 60% of this money came from outside Wisconsin.

Donors would not be required to report their employer. This makes it difficult to track the relationship between a company that receives grants or tax credits from the state and donations of their employees to candidates.

Removed from the statute is the purpose of campaign finance laws: The legislature finds and declares that our democratic system of government can be maintained only if the electorate is informed. It further finds that excessive spending on campaigns for public office jeopardizes the integrity of elections….When the true source of support or extent of support is not fully disclosed, or when a candidate becomes overly dependent upon large private contributors, the democratic process is subject to a potential corrupting influence.

Perhaps Speaker Vos found his bill a bit in conflict with the real purpose of campaign finance laws. If he truly wants to improve democracy by increasing citizens’ participation in campaigns, I wonder if he’d join me in supporting an amendment to his bill suggested in the testimony of Matt Rothschild, the executive director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

In a March hearing, Mr. Rothschild cited one way to amplify the voice of small campaign donors was to use public financing to match – by five times – the donation of anyone who gave $175 or less to a candidate. This sounds like a great way to strengthen democracy.

I haven’t met a single voter who thinks we need more out of state or dark money in Wisconsin elections. Without regard to political affiliation, people think there is already too much influence on elections from outside Wisconsin.

Every donation to influence an election needs to be reported in a way citizens can see who is behind the nasty ads. Not only should groups disclose their donors, they should register every patriotic or feel good name used to influence elections.

We don’t need more dark money. We need more democracy and the best way to get that is to let the light shine in.