The Division of Personnel Management is a newly created arm of the Department of Administration. It was formed last year through the 2015-2017 state budget as a successor to the Office of State Employment Relations. Like its predecessor, the division provides human resources support and oversees the civil service system.

The division’s creation was viewed, at the time, as a bid to put state hiring more tightly under the governor’s control.

‘Should have

raised red flags’

Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, has been among the most vocal critics of the civil service changes. Erpenbach called the DPM memo “pretty significant” and said someone in Walker’s office “dropped the ball” by not relaying it to Steineke or other lawmakers.

“The office you just created is telling you this is a bad bill,” Erpenbach said. “It should have raised red flags all over the place, and it didn’t.”

Steineke said a staffer with the governor’s office told him the DPM employee who wrote the memo no longer works for the agency. It was not clear who the DPM staffer is or how that employee became separated from the agency.