Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON – Attorney General Brad Schimel gave his official spokesman a 17.5% raise in February, six months after his campaign stopped paying him.

The increase means that spokesman Johnny Koremenos — Schimel's campaign manager in 2014 — is keeping his same take-home pay, but is now having it paid entirely by taxpayers instead of partly by Schimel’s campaign.

Schimel put Koremenos on the state payroll soon after he won. For the next year and a half, Koremenos performed work for the Republican attorney general’s official office as well as his campaign, collecting paychecks from both.

Such an arrangement is allowed but unusual. Koremenos defended the practice in July 2016, but stopped taking money from the campaign a week later, after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote about the practice. Koremenos has continued to perform work for the campaign, but now does it as a volunteer.

In February, Koremenos got a nearly $14,000 annual pay bump from taxpayers, according to newly released data from the state. That raised his salary from $80,000 to $94,000.

The size of the increase is about the same amount Koremenos had been receiving from the campaign. In 2015, Koremenos received $13,866, about $100 less than he will now be getting from taxpayers.

With the increase came more responsibilities. He previously supervised one employee and an intern. He now supervisors three workers and an intern, said Deputy Attorney General Paul Connell.

Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal One Wisconsin Now, questioned the arrangement, saying in a statement that Schimel had given his spokesman “a huge raise to explain away his failures.”

“If this were a trial about Brad Schimel using law enforcement dollars to finance his political operation, this would be Exhibit A,” Ross' statement said of the raise.

Schimel approved the raise because Koremenos had been given more duties after a reorganization of the public affairs division, Connell said.

“This increase in responsibility has led to a significant increase in the hours Mr. Koremenos dedicates to state service, and the increased management role and the additional hours warranted a raise in pay,” Connell said by email.

Like all salaried employees, Koremenos does not receive overtime pay when he works more than 40 hours in a week.

Koremenos stopped taking pay from Schimel’s campaign after the Journal Sentinel story last year “to avoid any concerns that he might be doing campaign work during normal business hours" at the Department of Justice, Connell wrote in his email.