Some Assembly Republicans are looking to Washington, D.C., for inspiration to overhaul Wisconsin’s elections and ethics agency, the Government Accountability Board. But critics say the model those lawmakers cite, the Federal Election Commission, is not one of effective campaign oversight. Rather, they say, it’s one of gridlock and dysfunction. “It’s like setting up a disaster-relief agency and saying you’re going to use the FEMA handling of Hurricane Katrina as your model,” said Larry Noble, former general counsel to the Federal Election Commission. Noble now is senior counsel at a nonpartisan advocacy group, the Campaign Legal Center.
Assembly Republicans such as Rep. Joe Sanfelippo say they’re looking to the commission, or FEC, as a model for overhauling Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board, or GAB. Republicans who control the Legislature have said for months that a major shakeup of the GAB is in the offing but haven’t yet unveiled their proposal to do so.
Sanfelippo, R-New Berlin, and other Assembly Republicans — including Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson, named by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos as the lawmaker who will shepherd a GAB overhaul bill — want to change the GAB to have the same structure as the FEC. The federal commission has six members, three Democrats and three Republicans. The GAB is nonpartisan, made up of six former judges appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.
Full Article: Some recoil at using FEC as model for elections overhaul in Wisconsin | Politics and Elections | host.madison.com.
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