For Release: Monday - March 9, 2015
to Get a Capitol Hearing This Week
Really awful, "high priority" legislation devised by politicians to protect politicians from effective investigations – a measure that nobody has clamored for except politicians – will receive a public hearing this week in the State Capitol in Madison. A good name for it would be the "Political Corruption Protection Act of 2015," or the PCP bill, for short. Like the PCP drug, this legislation is toxic, dangerous, mind-altering and ought to be illegal.
"John Doe" investigations have long been utilized in Wisconsin to investigate and ferret out political corruption as well as a whole host of other crimes. It was through the John Doe process in 2001-2002 that six top state legislative leaders of both major political parties were investigated and brought to trial and ultimately convicted and forced from public office in the worst political scandal in Wisconsin's history – the Legislative Caucus Scandal.
The "PCP" measure, Senate Bill 43, is a hyper-partisan measure authored almost entirely by legislators who were not in office when the Caucus Scandal enveloped the Capitol and paralyzed the state in 2002. They do not like the idea of having to be subject to the same laws "normal" Wisconsin citizens must abide by and they are demanding preferential treatment for themselves by making it much more difficult for political crimes to be effectively investigated. And, they hate that the John Doe process was utilized to investigate wrong doing that led to the criminal conviction of six individuals working for, or supporting Scott Walker when he was the Milwaukee County Executive. And they hate even more that the John Doe process was being used by a Republican Special Prosecutor, three Democratic and two Republican District Attorneys to investigate possible criminal, illegal campaign coordination between Walker's 2012 recall election campaign and big, outside special interest groups such as Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCG) and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC).
The fate of that investigation is now in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where four of the seven justices have huge conflicts of interest as the beneficiaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent in their behalf by WCG and WMC.
For more background information about the PCP bill, go here.
You need to contact both your State Senator and State Representative and tell them you vehemently oppose Senate Bill 43. If you are not sure who they are, go here.
Let's not allow politicians to make it more difficult to investigate political corruption!
CONTACT:
Jay Heck
608/256-2686 (office)
608/512-9363 (cell)
Common Cause in Wisconsin
152 W. Johnson St., Suite 212
Madison, WI 53703
608/256-2686
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