Board member calls campaign finance bill `mind boggling’

The proposal has been rocketing through the Legislature, with the Assembly passing it less than two weeks after it was introduced.

Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said the bill is still being discussed by Senate Republicans. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), said she’s confident the legislation would pass but declined to say if she thought changes would be made first. “Of course we’ll be willing to listen”, Vos said, “but I’m not going to negotiate in the press when nobody has said exactly what it would take in order for us to get the votes to make this gets to Governor Walker’s desk”. Walker has been vocally supportive of reorganizing the board, saying that having a board with bipartisan representation including election clerks is “real reform”.

The proposal would replace the six nonpartisan judges on the Government Accountability Board with an equal number of Republican and Democratic appointees.

But Democratic Rep. Chris Taylor said there was no evidence that the board acted with partisan interests. He wouldn’t say whether he agreed with the decisions.

Election clerks registered their support Tuesday for Wisconsin’s embattled nonpartisan elections board, which would be eliminated under a bill moving quickly through the Legislature.

Luther Olsen says the measure doing away with the Government Accountability Board does not have the backing of between three and four GOP senators, himself included.

Republican Reps. Todd Novak, of Dodgeville, Warren Petryk, of Eleva, and Travis Tranel, of Cuba City, voted against it.

A Senate committee planned to vote on both measures Thursday.

The bill overhauling the state’s campaign finance law will likely undergo changes before it passes the Senate, based on what form it passes the Assembly, Tanck said. The house is also expected to give final legislative approval to ending secret John Doe investigations into political crimes. Republican supporters say opponents are overreacting and the measures are about freedom of speech, reacting to court rulings and created to encourage greater participation in the political process. But majority Republicans say the non-partisan model turned into an agency that favors Democrats.

In accordance with the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, the bill would change state law to say that candidates can coordinate with issue advocacy groups that don’t directly call for the election or defeat of a particular candidate.

Democrats decried the bills, but didn’t have the votes to stop them.