Bice: Republicans accuse Democratic candidate Tony Evers of plagiarizing three more times in past budgets

Daniel Bice | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Show Caption Hide Caption Tony Evers addresses plagiarizing claims Democratic candidate for governor Tony Evers answers questions surrounding Republicans' claim that his campaign plagiarized budget requests.

State schools Superintendent Tony Evers' plagiarism problem is getting worse.

Republicans released records Sunday that document three more occasions in which Evers submitted budget requests dating to 2012 that lifted passages nearly word-for-word from other sources without credit.

In one instance, Evers' education budget plan contains a four-paragraph section that matches the language of a study by a national policy group with the only difference being that his education plan uses "pupils" instead of "students."

They also found that an uncredited passage in Evers' most recent budget plan was also used — verbatim and without citation — by his office twice previously.

More news today of Tony Evers’ budget requests including plagiarism. First, it was the current budget request, now news that past budgets also included blatant plagiarism. — Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) October 21, 2018

Gov. Scott Walker, who faces Evers in the Nov. 6 election, posted multiple tweets Sunday attacking the Democratic candidate for "blatant plagiarism." The GOP governor included statements on plagiarism from Evers' state agency and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Tony Evers’ hypocrisy is amazing — even for a Madison politician," Walker tweeted. "Tony Evers is running on his budget. Either he didn’t know what is actually in it or he did and doesn’t care about plagiarism. In my book, either is a problem."

But Evers was largely dismissive of the attack.

At a Sunday campaign stop in Milwaukee, Evers said his staff had made a mistake by simply failing to provide citations "on a handful of the back pages" of his budget proposals.

The state schools chief said the numbers, not the references, are the most important part of those documents. He said he will be focused on getting more money for Wisconsin students.

"It's amazing to me that the governor, who has been called unfit for office by three of his lieutenants, is spending all of his time around citations," Evers said, referring to ex-top Walker officials who have come out in favor of the Democrat.

Budget plans are not copyrighted or bylined, but they include detailed narratives of why department heads want to spend state or federal funds in a particular way.

RELATED: Tony Evers submitted budget request with plagiarized sections, raising new issue in governor's race

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In Friday's gubernatorial debate, Evers acknowledged that four passages in his current budget plan were lifted from other sources. He is not disciplining anyone at his agency but is requiring staff to undergo training on the use of references and citations.

Walker's campaign found the passages using software that detects possible plagiarism. They initially accused Evers of pilfering passages from Wikipedia, a blog by an intern at a think tank and two other sources.

"Well, if this is the best that Scott Walker has, he doesn’t have much," Evers said at the debate. He then tried to turn the issue on Walker by saying: "My definition of plagiarism is when Scott Walker takes my budget and calls them his own.”

RELATED: Scott Walker and Tony Evers spar over immigration, taxes, health care in first debate

This issue mirrors one that proved to be a turning point in the 2014 campaign for governor. Democratic candidate Mary Burke struggled to respond to national reports that her campaign had lifted much of her jobs plan from others.

Walker defeated Burke that year.

On Sunday, neither Evers nor his campaign aides disputed the charge that his past education plans also borrowed passages from other resources without crediting them.

In 2012, he submitted a budget request that included four paragraphs of policy analysis on student dropouts that matches the language from a lengthier passage in a 2010 report by the Alliance for Excellent Education, except for Evers' plan using "pupils" three times instead of "students."

Republicans noted that the 2010 study cites numerous sources in its report, something that is not present in Evers' budget plan.

Walker aides also found that one of the plagiarized passages in Evers' current budget proposal — on workforce experiences for youth — also appears in his two previous plans dating to 2014 without credit.

That section is taken nearly verbatim from a 2011 study published by the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability.

While these three uncredited passages from old Evers proposals certainly add to the story, they don't appear as egregious as the four blocks of unattributed material included in the plan he submitted last month.

Sam Lau, a campaign aide to the Democratic nominee, accused the second-term governor of using Evers' education budgets as political fodder, not as an impetus to find more money for students. Lau noted Walker has signed bills based on model legislation from the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

"He is grasping at straws," Lau said in a statement.

State Republicans suggested that a spokesman for Evers' education agency indicated last week that the plagiarism issue in the September budget plan was a onetime mistake. But the repeated use of the policy analysis on workforce training from the national group suggests this was an ongoing problem, Walker's aides contend.

As the state's top elected school official, Evers is responsible for proposing an education spending plan every two years.

"Tony Evers repeatedly plagiarized the education budgets he authored over the course of six years — failing to meet a level of accountability a teacher would require from any third-grader," said Alec Zimmerman of the state Republican Party.

Tom McCarthy, spokesman for the state Department of Public Instruction, suggested that his agency is aware of these previously undisclosed, uncredited sections in Evers' old budget requests.

He added: "The proper citations will be in place, and the budget documents will be updated Monday."

Bill Glauber of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this report. Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.