Wisconsin’s long-lasting nonpartisan Government Accountability Board came to a sad, and abrupt end June 30, after Republican legislators were tired of John Doe investigations. One of the biggest victims of the shut down of the GAB, is it’s former executive director Kevin Kennedy. The Shepherd Express wrote this report:
“On the one hand we were important enough, did enough good things that the people who wanted to control the process needed to squelch it,” the GAB’s ex-executive director Kevin Kennedy told Wisconsin Eye’s Steve Walters last week. “That’s almost a vindication of how good we did our jobs.”
Wisconsin’s GAB was a rare thing in the United States: a national model of an independent, nonpartisan elections and ethics board that was led by retired judges who were nominated by the governor and approved by two-thirds of the state Senate.
The GAB was in place for Wisconsin’s recent political turmoil—the recount in the spring 2011 election for state Supreme Court, the recalls, the enactment of photo ID and a host of new elections laws, as well as the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s apparent coordination with allegedly independent groups during the 2011 and 2012 recalls, which was shut down by a John Doe judge and the state Supreme Court but might be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
For more, visit: Shepherd Express.
