WI State Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald, Repug, trying to neuter the watchdogs

Fitzgerald has always been a vindictive man.




Mills: State Senate leader Scott Fitzgerald trying to neuter the watchdogs


https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/emily-mills/2018/01/26/wisconsin-senate-leader-scott-fitzgerald-defangs-elections-ethics-commission-watchdogs/1069344001/
Emily Mills Published 11:21 a.m. CT Jan. 26, 2018

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald spoke about the decision by Senate Republicans to deny the confirmation of Michael Haas as director of the Elections Commission. WisconsinEye
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(Photo: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel files)
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No one is above the law, or so we like to think in our democracy.

Someone ought to remind state Senate Republicans.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted along party lines to deny the confirmations of Michael Haas, director of the Elections Commission, and Brian Bell, director of the Ethics Commission. Why? Because they used to work for the now-defunct Government Accountability Board, which had the audacity to have run an investigation into Republicans that was eventually shut down by the conservative-dominated state Supreme Court.

MORE: GOP lawmakers will appoint Wisconsin elections chief if commission doesn't act, Sen. Scott Fitzgerald says

Regardless of one’s personal feelings about the legality of that investigation, neither Haas nor Bell played any part in it. But Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald is so shaken by the whole matter that he told reporters he wishes all former GAB employees would just resign already.

What’s he so afraid of?

Reports and findings by both the Ethics Commission and the attorney general cleared both Haas and Bell of potential wrongdoing. The ethics and elections commissions, by the way, are bipartisan bodies made up of three Republicans and three Democrats each. For good reason: they’re meant to provide reasonably fair oversight of the non-partisan administrators who work for the commissions. No matter which party holds the majority at any given time, then, the idea is that the folks tasked with making sure lawmakers are acting in an ethical and fair manner, and that our elections are run in the same way, can do so without interference.

Fitzgerald and his fellow GOP senators are meddling in their own oversight. This has, as it should, met with a lot of pushback from fellow legislators, the commissions themselves, and watchdog groups such as Common Cause of Wisconsin and the ACLU of Wisconsin (both of which have said they may pursue lawsuits)......................................