In his State of the State address, Gov. Jim Doyle praised the ""sweeping ethics reform"" that established the Government Accountability Board. Still, many—including Doyle—believe more reforms must be passed before Wisconsin's political environment can call itself clean again.
On Sept. 1 the state Ethics Board and state Elections Board will officially fuse into one agency, the Government Accountability Board. Current Wisconsin Ethics Board Director Roth Judd said he expects the new board to materialize with no major hiccups and to be ""an opportunity to make the laws work better.""
Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, agrees that GAB will have the proper tools to enforce ethics laws. However, McCabe only sees this as the first of many steps to strengthen ethics.
""We need new laws,"" McCabe said.
One new measure, the ""revolving door"" bill that would prohibit officials from becoming lobbyists within a year of leaving office, has been proposed.
Additional legislation would force special interest groups flooding television sets with ""issue ads"" before elections to disclose who funds the ad, according to Josh Wescott, communication director for Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit.
Wescott said the initiative would ""pull back the curtain"" on corporate special interest groups and possibly eliminate ""nasty ads.""
State Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, and chair of the assembly committee on judiciary and ethics, said it is possible to reach an agreement on such a bill, but is wary of the comprehensive reform.
Gundrum said if the bill was to target ads of corporate entities but not those of unions and Indian tribes, ""it could greatly affect the advantage for a party.""
Before implementing new reforms, some state officials feel they must trim the fat from the new ethics bill.
Several lawmakers and lawyers disagree with a clause in the bill that allows government officials who break ethics laws in an outside county to choose to have their case heard in their home district.
Dane Country District Attorney Brian Blanchard sees it as a distortion of criminal law and bad public policy. Blanchard said it is fundamental to criminal law nationwide that ""the place where you try a crime is the county in which it occurred.""
Giving lawbreakers the right to pick where their case is heard also delays court cases and creates confusion among districts, Blanchard said.
""We don't need reasons to make these cases more complicated,"" he said.
Gundrum, a graduate of UW-Madison's law school, challenged Blanchard's basis for questioning the constitutionality of the clause.
""Any human being in the state who violates one of these laws ... will be treated exactly the same,"" Gundrum said.
Wescott echoed Gundrum's statement. ""We're very confident that [the Ethics Bill] is constitutional and good to go.""
