Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

Some campaign promises build in a bit of wiggle room. The one made by candidate for governor Scott Walker to “Strip policy and pork projects from the state budget” did not.

This unequivocal pledge, posted on Walker’s campaign website, committed the candidate to eschewing both parties’ longstanding practice of using the budget to make policy changes and reward special interests.

In April 2011, less than four months into Walker’s term, the truth-testers at PolitiFact Wisconsin branded this a broken promise. It noted that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau had identified dozens of non-fiscal items in the governor’s budget repair bills and first biennial budget.

Walker’s latest executive budget, for 2013-15, included what the Fiscal Bureau identified as 58 policy items and 15 pieces of pork — that is, expenditures or breaks with specific beneficiaries. The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed only a dozen policy items.

Spokesman Tom Evenson, asked if the governor had a change of heart about his campaign vow, said in an email that Walker has turned a $3.6 billion budget deficit into a projected $560 million surplus and made gains in job creation.

“We’re better off than we were two years ago, and sound fiscal management is allowing us to invest in our priorities and move Wisconsin forward,” Evenson wrote.

It’s hard to deny that Walker is doing pretty much exactly what he promised to stop. But that doesn’t mean the pork projects and policy items included in his budget are bad ideas.

Among the identified earmarks, a.k.a. pork, are $10.6 million for a Milwaukee facility to serve families affected by domestic violence, $5 million for a Wisconsin Maritime Center of Excellence in Marinette County, and a $1 million allocation to the Teach for America program.

Moreover, some items flagged as non-fiscal, including a program for expanded DNA collection, do involve budget allocations. The Fiscal Bureau acknowledges its list “always requires some subjective judgment” but says it applies consistent criteria, like whether an item “typically would be reviewed by a standing committee of the Legislature.”

Among other things, Walker’s budget would ease state regulation on rent-to-own companies, remove a ban on foreigners buying up large chunks of Wisconsin land, create a new charter school oversight board, disallow wolf hunting at night, and name a Milwaukee crime lab after a former Milwaukee County prosecutor.

Even some members of Walker’s own party think he’s gone too far.

“The governor campaigned on not having policy in the budget,” state Sen. Rob Cowles, R-Allouez, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “What happened to that promise?” His answer: “They pile things into the budget so they can hide them, and they don’t have to take responsibility for their action.”

One controversial policy item in Walker’s budget would bar local governments and school districts from imposing residency rules on their employees. This has been decried as a meddling attack on local control and as political payback to police and fire unions in Milwaukee that have supported Walker.

At a May 8 press conference in the state Capitol organized by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett called the proposed change “horrible public policy” that could never pass as stand-alone legislation.

Another speaker, Beloit City Manager Larry Arft, said local communities want to make sure their employees are “sharing the destiny of the residents that are paying their salaries.” And Two Rivers City Manager Greg Buckley said it’s a good to have municipal workers living nearby “when the crap hits the fan or when it starts backing up in your basement.”

The Joint Finance Committee, meeting the next day, largely ignored such concerns. It kept intact the ban on residency rules while allowing only distance-based rules for certain emergency workers.

During that same meeting, the Finance Committee added a new non-fiscal budget provision — forbidding any municipality from banning the sale of large sugary drinks.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by The Joyce Foundation.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Rebecca Blank, incoming chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sure, the acting U.S. commerce secretary, set to start in July, will make $500,000 a year — plus benefits and perks including a university residence and car, money for travel and entertainment, and an unpaid academic appointment for her husband.

But she’ll be stepping into a host of controversies, drawing flak from all directions. As one UW-Madison student quipped, “Blank is not starting off with a blank slate.”

There’ll be ongoing fallout from some legislators’ volcanic eruptions over revelations that the UW System has a $648 million reserve fund. Though this is in line with other state systems, Wisconsin politicians are “disgusted.” Observers expect a two-year tuition freeze and the axing of some or all of the additional university funding proposed in Gov. Scott Walker’s 2013-15 budget.

The UW-Madison is also under fire over its ties to Palermo Villa of Milwaukee, which makes Palermo’s Pizza.

A strike was launched last June 1, days after about three-fourths of the factory’s 200 production workers signed a petition seeking to unionize. About 75 workers were fired when they were allegedly unable to verify their immigration work status; others were terminated for other reasons.

Around this time, Palermo’s inked a three-year, $600,000 deal under which its pizza is sold at Kohl’s Center and Camp Randall events, and promoted in those venues and elsewhere. A separate licensing agreement, which lets its pizzas be sold by Roundy’s under the Bucky Badger logo, has earned the university nearly $20,000 since 2010.

Students and others gather outside Bascom Hall on April 29 to protest the University of Wisconsin-Madison's ties to Palermo's Pizza. Bill Lueders/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Groups including the UW-Madison Student Labor Action Coalition are pressuring interim Chancellor David Ward to sever these ties. More than 10,000 names appear on an online petition to this effect.

The movement teems with youthful exuberance. The main website for the anti-Palermo’s campaign is called sliceofjustice.com. One of its rallying cries is “No justice. No piece.”

Last November, the UW-Madison Labor Codes Licensing Compliance Committee urged the university to move toward ending its contract. A report issued in February by the Worker Rights Consortium, a labor rights monitoring organization that lists the UW-Madison as an affiliate, concluded that Palermo’s has “engaged in serious violations of worker rights.”

Palermo’s, in a statement, called the report “a work of fiction” created to punish the company for complying with federal immigration laws.

Last fall, the National Labor Relations Board dismissed allegations that the 75 workers were fired in retaliation for protected organizing activities. An appeal of this ruling was rejected in late April.

Ward trumpetedthis finding, saying that while the university continues to urge an end to the labor dispute, “we believe that cutting ties with Palermo’s at this time is not warranted based on the facts.”

Protesters display signs from the windows of Bascom Hall while occupying a reception area outside interim Chancellor David Ward's office on April 29. Bill Lueders/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

But Richard Saks, the Milwaukee attorney who lodged the complaint, notes that not all charges were dismissed. The NLRB, he says, “has been prepared to issue a complaint and prosecute Palermos for various other serious labor law violations.”

On April 29, a dozen protesters occupied a reception area outside Ward’s office for about three hours, until removed by police, while about 100 others rallied outside. They sang “Solidarity Forever” and chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Palermo’s contract’s got to go!”

One speaker, Scot McCullough of the UW-Oshkosh, reflected that college students like himself are in “a unique stage in our lives.” They won’t be denied a degree for speaking out; they aren’t beholden to employers who can use a paycheck to keep them in line.

“We’re free,” he told the crowd. “The question is, what do we do with that freedom?” The choices he outlined: Use it to benefit oneself, or try to help others.

That’s a good question for college students to ask, even if the answers they come up with make things difficult for the people who run universities.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by The Joyce Foundation.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

You can practically feel Patrick Durkin’s blood pressure rising, column after column. The Waupaca-based outdoor recreation writer has devoted more than a dozen of his weekly offerings since 2009 decrying what he feels is the state’s inadequate response to the threat posed to deer by chronic wasting disease, or CWD.

His April 21 column, carried in papers including the Wisconsin State Journal and Green Bay Press Gazette, looked at a CWD hot spot in north-central Iowa County near Spring Green. There, the annual growth rate for the fatal brain disease has reached 27 percent among deer 2½ years or older.

This finding, for the reporting year ending March 31, is “unprecedented,” “frightening” and “disturbing,” various experts told Durkin. He lambasted state policymakers and hunting groups for doing virtually nothing to stop it, or even to fund basic research.

“There’ll be no shortage of shame as this stench spreads,” Durkin warned.

Durkin, in an interview, unloads the other barrel. He notes that programs like Earn-A-Buck, meant to contain the spread of the disease, have been beaten back by politically connected groups like the Hunters Rights Coalition, made up of hunting and firearms advocates.

“These aren’t Wisconsin’s best scientific minds blowing this off,” Durkin fumes. “The best scientific minds are using words like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘frightening.’ ”

Politicians including Gov. Scott Walker have put the kibosh on CWD-eradication strategies seen as detrimental to herd size. And James Kroll, Walker’s deer trustee, has recommended “a more passive approach” to the disease.

Durkin thinks the state’s approach has already been too passive for too long.

Tami Ryan, the Department of Natural Resource’s wildlife health section chief, admits the agency’s efforts toward the goal of containing the disease have not succeeded. “There are objectives and actions in our CWD Response Plan that we have been unable to implement, and that’s due in part to social and political factors,” she says.

An analysis of CWD test results reported on the DNR’s website shows that the number of deer being tested has gone down while the rate of infection has gone up.

Between 2002 (the first full year after CWD was discovered in Wisconsin) and 2006, an average of more than 25,000 deer a year were tested. Between 2007 and 2012, the average was just over 8,000.

Meanwhile, the incidence of CWD-infected deer has risen steadily from .5 percent in 2002 to a 5 percent in 2012— a tenfold increase in 10 years.

Dave Clausen, a veterinarian who serves on the state‘s Natural Resources Board, expects this trend to continue. “All indications are that under current policy, CWD will continue to spread across the state and will increase in prevalence where it is established,” he wrote to the DNR in February.

This could have a potentially devastating impact on the state’s deer population — or worse. Scientists have not ruled out the possibility that CWD, caused by an infectious malformed protein known as a prion, could be transmitted to humans.

Richland County resident John Stauber, co-author of the 1997 book “Mad Cow U.S.A.,” which warned of this possibility, says state officials have “circled the wagons to make sure CWD was not perceived as a threat to human health.” He believes every dead deer should be tested statewide and no deer should be processed until it tests negative.

The DNR asserts that “CWD has never been shown to cause illness in humans,” but notes that public health officials advise against eating meat from CWD-infected deer. The agency has tracked hundreds of cases where this has occurred, and knows that there are many more. This behavior, according to Stauber, increases the risk that CWD will make the species jump to humans.

“If enough people are consuming affected deer, “ he says, “eventually you’re going to have a transmission.”

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by The Joyce Foundation.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

As the dust settles on the epic battles over union rights for public workers in Wisconsin, two new major works aim to put these events into perspective.

The first is “Citizen Koch,” a documentary by award-winning filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. It aired at the Sundance Film Festival in January and the Wisconsin Film Festival this month.

The second is “More Than They Bargained For,” a book by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters Jason Stein and Patrick Marley, published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Both recount how newly elected Gov. Scott Walker in February 2011 “dropped the bomb” (his words) regarding his plan to largely end the collective bargaining rights of most state and local public employees.

“Citizen Koch” frames these events as part of a national conservative agenda pushed by billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch, founders and funders of the “grassroots” advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.

The film notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision enabled the Koch brothers (estimated combined worth: $68 billion) and others to spend unlimited sums on political campaigns. They then set out to help elect politicians like Walker and, later, help him withstand a recall attempt.

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips (annual compensation: more than $300,000) is shown disparaging “pampered” public employee unions. The film’s gasp-inducing final shot shows another AFP official calling the group “just like the Red Cross, just like any other nonprofit.” (Group spokesman Levi Russell did not respond to inquiries about the film.)

“Citizen Koch” gives ample airtime to fans of the court’s ruling in Citizens United, and to Walker’s Tea Party backers. But its heart is with the opposition, and it presents what happened in Wisconsin as the product of nefarious design.

In contrast, “More Than They Bargained For” makes the events in Wisconsin seem messier, less deliberate, at times even slapdash. The book’s title reflects its theme that nobody, least of all Scott Walker, anticipated the massive blowback he would unleash.

Stein and Marley, veteran reporters with enviable access, have penned the definitive journalistic account of the Wisconsin uprising, especially as it played out in the state Legislature. They make it a story about individuals, not titanic forces.

And yet the book largely substantiates the claims made in “Citizen Koch” about the Wisconsin drama’s larger ideological context.

“This is our moment,” Walker told a blogger pretending to be David Koch, comparing his throwdown with unions to Ronald Reagan’s axing of air traffic controllers in 1981.

Both sides realized, Stein and Marley write, that “if Walker could defeat public employees” in Wisconsin, with its deep union roots, “that would spell further decline for labor throughout the nation.”  Indeed, they say, “the protests helped confirm they were close to achieving something of great moment that was worthy of the national attention they were receiving.”

The protests also helped Walker mobilize national support — and big money. In the end, his side raised nearly three times as much as proponents of the recall, $59 million to $22 million. And nearly two-thirds of Walker’s war chest came from donors in other states.

“More Than They Bargained For” is an ambitious and largely successful attempt, as reviewer John Nichols put it, “to establish a record that is accepted – if not entirely embraced – by all sides in an ongoing dispute that has no middle.”

“Citizen Koch,” meanwhile, unabashedly chooses sides. The film’s website has a Take Action page where visitors can join efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United.

But neither treatment captures the enormity of emotion underlying these events — the deep-rooted and corrosive feelings of betrayal, or resentment, held by individual state residents. No one book or movie could do that. This slice of state history has as many versions as it does people who lived through it.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

The 15 recall elections for governor and state Senate consumed an estimated $137 million. Another $80 million or so poured into Wisconsin’s race for U.S. Senate.

There were astonishing levels of public engagement, and enragement, with crowds swarming the Capitol. Special interest groups staged rallies and ran ads. It seemed certain that Wisconsin would set a new record for lobbying outlays — money spent trying to influence state law or policy.

After all, these expenditures rose steadily in each two-year legislative session since 1999-2000, totaling $65.4 million in 2009-10, according to the state Government Accountability Board.

Tallies garnered from the GAB in mid-April show that lobby spending during this tumultuous two-year period reached … drum roll please … $62.9 million.

That’s right: The total, while not exactly chump change, was lower than before. As they say on R-rated movies redubbed for network TV, “What the freak?”

“Maybe we’ve reached full capacity in terms of lobbying,” suggests Jay Heck, executive director of the nonprofit Common Cause in Wisconsin. “We’re at the saturation stage.”

Jonathan Becker, the GAB’s ethics division administrator, has another theory: “It’s the economy. Organizations and businesses are really cutting back on their expenditures,” including those for lobbying. “My guess is that, over time, it will increase again.”

The number of state lobby groups stayed about the same — 782 in 2009-10 and 778 in 2011-12. And Wisconsin still had about 800 licensed lobbyists, or six for every member of the Legislature.

Heck, himself a licensed lobbyist, recalls that the state’s current lobby disclosure law passed in 1998 with something known as “bipartisan support.”  The bill was approved unanimously by both houses of the state Legislature  and signed into law by Gov. Tommy Thompson..

In 2011-12, GAB numbers show, Wisconsin contract lobbyists (hired guns) were reportedly paid $30.8 million. Meanwhile, in-house lobbyists (lobby group employees) reported their lobbying-related compensation at $24.3 million. Other lobby costs came to $7.8 million.

The session’s highest rollers, spending a total of $6.3 million, were public employee unions — Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, Wisconsin Education Association Council and AFSCME Council 11. Tellingly, 94 percent of this flowed forth in 2011, when the unions were fighting changes that would weaken their power; just 6 percent came in 2012, after these changes were made.

Other big spenders in 2011-12 include Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin Hospital Association, AT&T Wisconsin, Wisconsin Medical Society, Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Inc. and Wisconsin Counties Association. All came in between $750,000 and $1 million. They were among more than 50 groups to top the $250,000 mark.

In terms of time spent, Wisconsin Property Taxpayers, a “property tax relief and reform” group, led the pack with 13,267 hours. A quarter of this, the largest share, went toward backing new state rules on metallic mining. Those efforts failed in 2011-12 but sailed through this year.

Other big players, timewise, were the three aforementioned unions and AFSCME International, Wisconsin Independent Businesses, Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and the Wisconsin Hospital Association. All racked up more than 7,500 lobby hours.

In all, state groups reported 432,255 hours of lobbying — the equivalent of 100 people working full time over these two years.

Lobbying is just one way interest groups seek to influence the political process, Heck notes. They also spend money on elections. For instance, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce spent an estimated $4.7 million on issue ads during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

Heck suggests that big electoral spenders, unions included, are helping their lobbyists gain access. He frames it as a question: “Are they protecting their lobbying efforts by investing in campaigns, or are they investing in campaigns so they can expand their lobbying influence?” It could be both.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

Anybody with Internet access can do it.

Just go to the Wisconsin State Legislature’s web page, http://legis.wisconsin.gov, and click “Legislation” on the left. A couple more clicks will lead you to lists of bills introduced in the current session, which runs through 2014.

The text and history of each bill are also within clicking distance.

Now comes the fun part. The menu option “Bill notification” lets visitors sign up for emails whenever any particular bill has a hearing, fiscal estimate or vote.

There is always more happening in the Legislature than any person can track or every media outlet can cover. Civic groups may want to “Adopt a bill,” like they might a stretch of highway.

Here, on the money and politics beat, are some of the bills we’ve asked to be notified about:

Assembly Bill 5 and its companion, Senate Bill 34, would expand existing sales and property tax exemptions for television and radio stations, for things like transmitters and vehicles. The state Department of Revenue estimates a $2.2 million annual decrease in sales tax and use revenues, and a shift of between $1 million to $2.1 million to other property taxpayers.

The bill, one of many over the years that have shifted state tax burdens, has mostly Republican cosponsors. But it’s also backed by state Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison, who told the Wisconsin State Journal he signed on because “the TV and radio stations in my district asked me to.”

On the lobby front (click “Government Accountability Board information”), the cities of Madison and Milwaukee have registered in opposition; the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association has registered in support.

AB 19 and SB 13 would, like prior “tort reforms,” raise the bar for people who want to sue. It creates new procedures and requirements for personal injury claims.

A fiscal estimate released April 4 — the email notification went out the next day — concluded that these rules would have applied to 6,350 Wisconsin circuit court actions last year. The fiscal impact was “Indeterminant.”

The bill, sponsored by Republicans, is shaping up to be a lobbying lollapalooza. Eleven groups including the business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce have registered in favor; five groups including the Wisconsin Association of Justice, representing trial lawyers, are opposed.

AB 83 and SB 71 is a GOP-led effort to let local governments impose tougher restrictions on wind-energy systems than those set by the state. It’s similar to past legislative efforts blamed for keeping wind power projects, and jobs, from coming to Wisconsin.

The bill is opposed by some environmental groups, unions and General Electric. Supporters include the Wisconsin Realtors Association, Wisconsin Counties Association and Wisconsin Towns Association.

Also in favor is the Coalition For Wisconsin Environmental Stewardship, “a statewide grassroots organization” that has managed to pay a contract lobbyist more than $150,000 since 2008. You could look it up.

AB 8, introduced by Republicans, would sharply limit the ability of local governments to forbid hunting with a bow and arrow or crossbow within their jurisdictions. And it would exempt arrow flingers from the current statutory ban on hunting within 1,700 feet of a hospital, sanatorium or school.

A similar bill was introduced last session but failed to pass, despite a favorable committee vote. It was backed by the National Rifle Association, Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, Wisconsin Bowhunters Association and Safari Club International, among others.

Some of these same hunting groups last year helped pass a bill that, as amended, opened state parks to hunting and trapping. Opponents included the Madison Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and Wisconsin State Horse Council.

This session, Democrats have introduced SB 17 to undo this requirement. The bill would restrict hunting and ban trapping in state parks. No supporters or opponents have yet registered.

If and when they do, the state’s legislative website will be keeping track.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

By Bill Lueders
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Journalist Steven Brill, in his recent 24,000-word Time magazine article on how the U.S. medical establishment is fleecing consumers, touted a database run by ProPublica, the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit newsroom.

This database, Dollars for Docs, logs payments from pharmaceutical companies to health professionals. Critics say this encourages recipients to use and recommend the products of these companies, with health insurers and consumers picking up the tab.

Updated in March, the database now itemizes $2 billion in payments from 2009 through 2012.

The actual total is much higher. The database only includes payments from the 15 drug companies — about half the U.S. market in sales — that disclose this information. And some have not reported all four years. (New rules will require industry-wide disclosure by September 2014.)

While the site lets anyone do simple searches, a subset of state data provided to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism allowed for more detailed analysis.

In all, more than $24 million has gone to Wisconsin health professionals since 2009. Eli Lilly and Pfizer each spent about $6 million, followed by Merck and AstraZeneca at about $3 million.

Three-quarters of the nearly 21,000 individual outlays were for meals. The largest expense category, at about $12 million, was for research.

Rick Abrams, CEO of the Wisconsin Medical Society, calls drug-company spending on research “really important” to the cause of medicine, especially now that federal spending is being pinched.

But Wisconsin providers also received about $9 million for speaking fees, and about $1 million in meals and gifts. The Medical Society advises: “Physicians shall accept no gifts from any provider of products that they prescribe to their patients.” Its non-binding rules also direct physicians to not speak on behalf of health product companies.

Abrams says physicians who accept gifts or speaking fees appear to be violating this rule, but cautions that “the specifics” of each case should be taken into account.

Finding recipients willing to discuss specifics is not easy.

A half-dozen Wisconsin practitioners listed in the database passed up opportunities to comment. These include Todd Mahr, a pediatric allergist and immunologist in La Crosse (roughly $370,000 since 2009), lipidologist Tara Dall of Delafield ($260,000) and family practitioner Daniel Duffy of Cedarburg ($250,000). Most of these payments were for speaking and educational forums.

Mutsumi Ishii, a Sun Prairie psychiatrist who’s received more than $350,000 from nine different drug companies, also did not respond. But a spokeswoman for Dean Clinic, where Ishii works, said clear rules prohibit the acceptance of anything “in exchange for prescribing drugs or other products” or that could be seen as interfering with patient care.

Bhupendra Khatri, a Milwaukee neurologist who specializes in multiple sclerosis, defends the $240,000 he’s gotten from drug companies since 2009, mostly for speaking.

“We work for it,” Khatri says. “We take time off from our clinic and time off from our family” to travel to speak. He says the large number of new MS drugs make this education needed, and insists there’s no favoritism toward certain companies: “We prescribe everything that’s available.”

Khatri and Barry Gidal, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy, stress that drug talks are highly regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“You can’t just go out and say whatever you want,” says Gidal, who has been paid $110,000 since 2009 by two drug companies for speaking and consulting. Gidal, not a prescribing physician, says he is performing a useful educational role in sharing his expertise on the “extremely complicated” drugs used to treat epilepsy.

And while Gidal supports full disclosure of these payments, he says it’s unfair to conclude that a practitioner who accepts them is doing something wrong.

“The pharmaceutical companies,” he argues, “do play a valuable role in our health care system.”

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

What if they held a Wisconsin Supreme Court election and nobody spent staggering sums trying to influence its outcome?

Witness the faceoff between Justice Patience Roggensack and challenger Ed Fallone. With the April 2 election just days away, the race has been supremely quiet — relative, that is, to some of the battle royales of the not-so-distant past.

A tally by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign shows that spending on the previous four state Supreme Court elections has totaled nearly $20 million, two-thirds of which has come from outside groups operating independently of the candidates’ campaigns.

The current race, like each of these others, pits a perceived conservative (Roggensack) against a perceived liberal (Fallone). Its outcome could preserve or shift the court’s 4-3 balance, now tilted in favor of conservatives.

Yet this column’s prediction a few weeks back that “all signs point to another jaw-dropping spend-fest” seems not to be coming true. The spending is merely substantial, not overwhelming.

The latest filing shows Roggensack raised $497,534 and Fallone $314,269 from Jan. 1 through March 18. That’s comparable to the $400,000-per-candidate grants available when the state sought to contain spending through public financing; the Legislature dismantled this program in 2011.

Several outside groups — Wisconsin Club for Growth, the Wisconsin Realtors and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce — have run radio and TV ads on Roggensack’s behalf. But this spending falls well short of other recent races. And, as if to underscore the lack of urgency, some of these ads have been (gasp!) purely positive.

Meanwhile, the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee, which poured a total of more than $4 million into the previous four races, appears to be sitting this one out.

Does that mean the role of money in state Supreme Court elections is waning?

Hah! Good one!

It could just be that Fallone’s allies are reluctant to spend on a fight they don’t think they can win, while Roggensack’s supporters may be practicing moderation because they don’t perceive a serious threat.

Jay Heck of the nonpartisan Common Cause in Wisconsin cites another factor: The ability of public employee unions to back liberal candidates has been diminished — an acknowledged goal of the state’s changes to collective bargaining.

In other words, one side doesn’t have to spend so much because the other side can’t.

And Heck decries the growing partisanship of state Supreme Court races. This includes a recent pro-Roggensack email from Brad Courtney, chairman of the state Republican Party, urging the faithful to ensure that “activist judges do not overturn the great reforms our courageous governor and legislators have fought for.”

“That’s pretty damning and distressing,” Heck says. “This is supposed to be a nonpartisan office.” (The state GOP, through spokesman Nathan Conrad, declined to respond.)

Former Justice Janine Geske agrees it’s been a low-key race. The reasons she gives range from “voter fatigue” after last year’s electoral tsunami, to Fallone’s late entry into the race, to “the recognition that it’s very tough to beat an incumbent.”

Geske draws a comparison to 2009, when Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson faced Randy Koschnick. Then, too, “people thought there would be a lot of outside spending and there wasn’t.” Both sides apparently assessed that Abrahamson would sail to victory, which she did.

Geske, who like Fallone is a professor at Marquette University Law School, agrees with his critique of the court as being rife with internal division. Watching the justices, she says, it is clearly “very difficult for them to have a prolonged discussion without personality conflicts entering into it.”

Fallone, she notes, has “tried to raise the issue of a dysfunctional court.” She thinks the public has a clear sense that this is a problem on the court.

But, she adds, “there is not a sense of how an election, either way, is going to help that.”

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Bill Lueders, Money and Politics Project director

For more than two decades, the rent-to-own industry, which leases such goods as televisions, appliances and furniture, has been fighting to free itself from certain provisions of Wisconsin law. Throughout, it has lubricated the gears of change with campaign donations and lobbying outlays.

“It’s something you have to do — what everybody does,” says Jeff Lebakken, president of the Wisconsin Rental Dealers Association, the main group pushing this change.

Lebakken, the owner of an Eau Claire-based rent-to-own company with 11 state stores, has given more than $33,000 to Wisconsin political candidates since 1999, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s searchable database.

Overall, an analysis shows $235,000 in donations of $100 or more over the past 20 years from individuals associated with the rent-to-own industry. Employees of Ashley Furniture, which leases goods to rent-to-own companies, led the pack at about $148,000, followed by Lebakken Rent to Own at $40,000 and a Texas company called Rent-A-Center at $39,000.

Top recipients include former Gov. Tommy Thompson, $42,700; former Gov. Jim Doyle, $22,500; and Gov. Scott Walker, $14,800.

But, as Lebakken notes, giving does not always translate into getting: “We put money with Gov. Doyle, and he vetoed our bill.” 

Doyle, a Democrat, did this in 2006. The desired changes were also axed in 2001 by Gov. Scott McCallum, a Republican who received at least $13,550 from affiliated donors.

In the 2003-04 and 2005-06 legislative sessions, culminating in the bill Doyle vetoed, Lebakken’s group spent a total of $600,000 on lobbying. These efforts cooled for several years but resumed in 2011-12, when the long-sought bill passed the Assembly but died in the Senate.

That brings us to the present, in which Walker has proposed to change the law in his budget. Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie points to a one-sentence explanation in the governor’s budget summary: “Revise state statutes related to rental-purchase agreements to create more choices for Wisconsin consumers.” He declines to elaborate.

The rent-to-own industry seeks to get out from under the thumb of the Wisconsin Consumer Act. Of particular concern is the requirement that it disclose fees in terms of annual interest rate, which can run as high as 300 percent.

“The industry knows that consumers will balk at entering these agreements, if they know how much they interest they’ll be paying,” says Bob Andersen, an attorney with Legal Action of Wisconsin, a federally funded nonprofit law firm that opposes the change.

There is opposition even from within Walker’s Republican Party. State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, recently called rent-to-own “a sleazy industry that preys on the poor by giving them contracts that no mathematically literate person would sign.”

Industry reps insist they’re helping people who can’t afford to buy goods or only need them temporarily. They say it’s not fair to apply the credit disclosure rule because their fees include such services as delivery and because the rental agreements can be terminated by the customer at will, by buying or returning products.

“We’re offering extraordinary flexibility and access,” says Rent-A-Center spokesman Xavier Dominicis. “We are not a credit transaction and that’s what the Wisconsin Consumer Act is designed to regulate.”

Dominicis says the changes will bring Wisconsin into line with 47 other states, which don’t treat rent-to-own as credit transactions, and allow the industry to expand its presence in the Badger State. While estimates vary, the national Association of Progressive Rental Organizations says there are 15 rent-to-own stores in Wisconsin; Colorado, with a similar population, has 95.

If the change goes through, says Lebakken, “I’d likely have more stores and also more business.” He believes the entry of other, competing rent-to-own businesses will benefit his own, through increased advertising and product awareness.

Rent-A-Center currently has no rent-to-own stores in Wisconsin. But if the law were changed, Dominicis says it would open “as many as the market would accommodate.”

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Until recently, Jeff Fitzgerald held one of the most powerful positions in Wisconsin government, as speaker of the state Assembly. He didn’t seek re-election last year because he ran for U.S. Senate, coming in fourth among four Republican primary contenders. His tenure as a legislator officially ended on Jan. 7.

Two days later, on Jan. 9, the state Government Accountability Board issued Fitzgerald a license to lobby.

He now represents a half-dozen interest groups, including Alliant Energy, which spent $194,000 on lobbying in the 2011-12 legislative session; School Choice Wisconsin, which supports public spending on private schools and has another former Assembly speaker, John Gard, on its lobby payroll; and the Wisconsin Council for Independent Education, which represents for-profit colleges.

The state’s current roster of more than 500 lobbyists includes at least 16 former legislators. Many of them, like Fitzgerald and Gard, were legislative leaders, including fellow former speakers Scott Jensen, Walter Kunicki and Mike Sheridan, and former Senate majority leaders Joe Strohl and Mary Panzer.

Jay Heck, a longtime observer of state government who heads the nonpartisan Common Cause in Wisconsin, thinks former leaders gravitate to lobbying because of their strong ties with both “folks in the lobbying world” and other legislators. “Lobbying is all about relationships,” he says.

But Heck decries the “revolving door” between lawmaking and lobbying. “It feeds a public perception that legislators, at least some of them, are legislators so they can cash in on the contacts they make.”

Wisconsin law currently bars former state agency officials from lobbying their former departments for 12 months after leaving state service. They can still work for and advise companies that do so; they just can’t have direct contact.

Repeated efforts have been made to extend a similar rule to former lawmakers. The current incarnation, SB 33, would impose a 24-month waiting period. The bill has 12 co-sponsors, including one Republican, state Rep. Ed Brooks of Reedsburg.

“It’s technically bipartisan,” notes state Sen. John Lehman, D-Racine, the bill’s lead sponsor.

Lehman acknowledges that former lawmakers can be effective lobbyists, and is fine with that. He just wants a “cooling off period” before such transitions occur. “It’s important for people to run for public office and hold public office without looking for a career as a lobbyist.”

The bill’s lead Assembly sponsor, state Rep. Dana Wachs, D-Eau Claire, agrees, saying in a statement: “We must focus on creating jobs for others, not ourselves.”

Rep. Brooks is less astringent: “I just think it’s a good bill. It kind of makes sense.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than 30 states make lawmakers wait, usually a year or two, before becoming lobbyists. The move to bring Wisconsin into this fold is backed by Common Cause and the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, whose executive director, Mike McCabe, warns of letting “service in the Legislature essentially become a training ground for a lobbying career.”

The Wisconsin State Journal, in an editorial on Fitzgerald’s job change, wondered whether current lawmakers might be influenced to act contrary to the public interest “by the promise of a lucrative lobbying job.”

What do the state’s lawmakers-turned-lobbyists have to say about this issue? Are they willing to defend their right to go from making laws to making money off of their connections?

Apparently not.

Jeff Fitzgerald did not respond to requests for comment. Likewise avoiding this opportunity were former state Sens. Panzer, Bob Welch and Ted Kanavas, and former state representatives Sheridan, Steve Foti and Tim Hoven, all of whom became lobbyists within two years of leaving office.

“There’s going to be bills like this that come and go,” Kanavas said. “I don’t have any thoughts on it.”

Jeff’s brother, Scott Fitzgerald, the current Senate majority leader, also took a pass. “Senator Fitzgerald has not had a chance to review this legislation,” said his spokesman, Tom Evenson.

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org). The project, a partnership of the Center and MapLight, is supported by the Open Society Institute.

The Center collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.