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Madison — State election officials cleared the way Wednesday for lobbyists to deliver campaign checks from their clients and political action committees at any time, including while lawmakers deliberate the state budget and other major legislation. For decades, lobbyists have been barred from providing contributions from others most of the time, gaining that ability only in the months before an election. But the state Government Accountability Board unanimously ruled that a law approved in March eliminated that prohibition.

The only restriction on lobbyist giving now is one that prevents them from making personal donations until April 15 in election years. But they will be free to hand off big campaign checks from special interest groups as legislators decide whether to tighten or loosen regulations affecting them.

"The idea of creating more opportunities for lobbyists to dole out checks for their clients was always a bad idea," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which lobbies for limits on campaign financing.

Lawmakers say they did not intend to loosen the rules on when lobbyists could provide checks from others. But because of poor drafting, the statute they wrote ended up doing that, the accountability board determined.

The board is made up of six retired judges and is charged with administering Wisconsin's elections and lobbying laws.

The law in question is complex and officials have had evolving interpretations of it. In recent weeks, legislators, nonpartisan attorneys for the Legislature and staff for the accountability board have all reversed themselves on what the new law means.

For decades, Wisconsin has banned lobbyists from "furnishing" campaign contributions to candidates most of the time, which election officials have said means lobbyists could not make personal donations to lawmakers, hand off campaign checks to them from political action committees or even discuss such fundraising with them.

In the past, that ban had been in place during the legislative session but fell away on June 1 of election years — giving lobbyists about five months to drum up campaign cash for legislators, the governor and other candidates.

This year, lawmakers looked at loosening the law in two ways — by allowing lobbyists to pass on checks at any time and by moving up the deadline when they could make personal contributions to April 15 of election years.

Intentions not met

Soon after introducing the bill, senators said they were backing off from that position, moving up the date only for personal contributions and keeping other aspects of that law in place. The rewritten version of the measure got through both houses of the Legislature, and Gov. Scott Walker signed it in March.

But in recent weeks, officials determined the law said something other than what legislators claimed they intended.

Initially, the accountability board's staff wrote in a memo that the new law included a "rather dramatic" change that barred lobbyists from ever passing along checks from others, even in the run-up to an election. But by Wednesday, the board's ethics director, Jonathan Becker, said he had changed his view on the matter and now believed lobbyists could deliver checks from others at any time.

The Legislative Council, which provides legal advice to the Legislature, reached the same conclusion in a memo last week — even though a lawyer with the agency wrote in a March memo that an amendment the Senate ultimately adopted "removes the bill's provision allowing a lobbyist to furnish a campaign contribution at any time" and instead maintains the current law.

Senators said at the time they passed the bill they were not making changes regarding when lobbyists could deliver checks from others. But in a letter this week to the accountability board, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) urged the board to adopt the latest position of the Legislative Council.

The Assembly has a policy that bars members of that house from accepting political action committee checks during the first year of a two-year legislative session. That policy remains in place for now, despite the accountability board's action.

The Senate has no similar restrictions on PAC donations.

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