WATCHDOG SQUAD MAKES FEW FRIENDS
By By Todd Richmond Associated Press
The state Justice Department's new government watchdog squad has declined to formally investigate three-fourths of the complaints it has taken since it was created a year and a half ago, an Associated Press review found.
Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager set up the Public Integrity Unit to combat misconduct in government. But as the unit's reputation has grown, its seven-person staff has been swamped with quarrels over everything from local zoning ordinances to a stolen guitar.
It all translates to rejected requests and griping that Lautenschlager cares only about cases that might help her get votes.
Robert Chyba, 69, of the town of Osceola, said he sent a letter to Lautenschlager asking her to look into Town Board members. He claimed they kept changing the zoning for the size of commercial farms so Chyba's neighbors could raise horses and sheep on their land. The unit refused a formal probe, saying local officials enjoy broad discretion on enforcing local ordinances and Chyba might want a private attorney.
"Nothing happened," Chyba said. "Apparently they ... only care about bigger cases that help them politically. The town of Osceola isn't going to bring them too many votes."
Monica Burkert-Brist, the assistant attorney general who heads the unit, said few people understand the unit was built to go after cases that can set statewide precedents, not local political battles. She stressed that nearly 100 complaints that didn't warrant a formal probe still got some form of preliminary review.
"We're not a roving commission to do good," Burkert-Brist said. "We're not the way people can solve every grievance about how government operates in their area."
A review of case data the Justice Department provided to the Associated Press showed the unit has received 385 complaints from its inception in 2003 through the first week in February.
According to the review, the unit has formally investigated 88 complaints. The unit has declined or referred to local authorities 167 complaints. Another 95 were reviewed with phone calls or follow-up letters from the unit, but weren't investigated by agents in the field. Thirty-five cases were still open.
"About 50 percent of the complaints we receive we do some sort of investigation or make recommendations," Lautenschlager said. The rest fall into "a Hatfield and McCoy situation."
Burkert-Brist said a letter or phone call from the unit often resolves situations, saving the expense of field investigations and going to court.
The Justice Department always has taken complaints about wrongdoing in government. Lautenschlager went a step further by creating the Public Integrity Unit in August 2003 to crack down on misconduct in government and uphold Wisconsin's open meetings and records laws.
She said she was "dumbfounded" when she took office in early 2003 and discovered 70 percent of the Division of Criminal Investigation's cases dealt with complaints about government. People were losing faith in public officials after five state lawmakers were charged with illegal campaigning in 2002, she said.
She reassigned Burkert-Brist, another attorney and five investigators to form the unit. No new positions were created.
The group, Burkert-Brist said, wants to set statewide precedents by tackling cases that involve recurring problems and issues drawing multiple complaints from around the state, such as whether government officials' e-mails are open records (they are).
The squad has scored some big successes: Two months after the unit was formed, it found the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents violated the state's open meetings law when it approved new salary ranges for top administrators in a secret teleconference. The regents agreed to rescind the new ranges. Last year, the unit forced the city of Rhinelander to release a secret settlement with an insurance company over a landfill cleanup to The Rhinelander Daily News newspaper and WXPR Radio.
Now complaints about government have been pouring into the unit, said Mike Bauer, administrator of the Justice Department's Legal Services Division. Complaints have ranged from town board members skipping their oaths of office to inmates who insist they were railroaded. One person wrote to complain about a UW-Fond du Lac faculty member who allegedly hired himself to star in two plays.
Carol Jennings, 64, of Maiden Rock in northwestern Wisconsin, asked the unit to investigate whether village president Doug Lansing actually lived in St. Paul, Minn., with his fiancee. According to state law, a person must be a resident of the area he or she would represent at the time of the election to legally run. If an elected official moves out of the area, the position becomes vacant.
After Lansing sent the unit utility and property tax bills for his house in Maiden Rock, Justice Department criminal litigation director Steve Tinker sent Jennings a letter saying he couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lansing didn't live in town. Her recourse was to vote against him at election time, Tinker said.
"The injustice multiplies," Jennings said. "How would they respond if they were given a complaint that the mayor of the city of Madison lived in Chicago? They wouldn't stand for it. My conclusion is size matters."
Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher, a Republican who is challenging Lautenschlager in the 2006 election, said the unit takes too long to respond to complaints. Lautenschlager is trolling for the big case that will give her the most political mileage, he said.
"She's waiting for that huge matter," Bucher said. "Then she'll handle it."
Lautenschlager denied the unit is politically motivated.
"Quite frankly, the work of this unit seldom makes you political friends," she said. "Instead, it alienates politically involved people statewide, and from both parties."