Jason Stein

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Madison — A judge serving as a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Ethics Commission has resigned in disgust, saying the newly created agency is ill-suited to its mission of ensuring clean government in the state.

Robert Kinney, a reserve judge in the state, was one of the panel's six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats — appointed by Gov. Scott Walker and legislative leaders of both parties. The commission was created this year after GOP lawmakers and Walker scrapped the former state Government Accountability Board in favor of ethics and election commissions.

Kinney said that the commission has already declined to take action in a private session on a complaint that he believed merited it.

"If financial or ethical improprieties are leveled, or allegations of quid pro quo corruption are made, they must be thoroughly and timely investigated, and, if warranted, aggressively prosecuted. Sadly, it appears we have created a system which almost guarantees that this will not occur," Kinney said in a statement Monday.

Kinney did not say what complaint the commission declined to act on.

But in October, Democrats filed an ethics complaint against the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee because it had not submitted a report on its fundraising and spending in September. Those reports let the public know how much political groups are raising and where they are getting their money.

A spokeswoman for the Republican Assembly committee had no comment.

Peg Lautenschlager, the Democratic chairwoman of the Ethics Commission and a former attorney general, and Katie McCallum, a former state Republican Party spokeswoman and daughter-in-law of former Gov. Scott McCallum, released a joint statement thanking Kinney for his service, pledging to replace him and declining to comment further.

In a brief interview, Lautenschlager would say only that she regretted Kinney's departure.

"We are losing a very committed and thoughtful member of the commission," she said.

The Government Accountability Board, which had a board of nonpartisan judges, was dismantled by Republicans this year after the board undertook an investigation of Walker's campaign during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections. The Wisconsin Supreme Court halted the investigation for good after finding that Walker did nothing wrong.

The board was replaced with partisan boards equally split along party lines.

Since the board was broken up, the state Elections Commission has gotten most of the public attention, successfully running a presidential election and a statewide recount with relatively few hiccups.

In his statement, Kinney, the reserve judge, said that the agency's commissioners are not listening to knowledgeable staff and that the public is shut out of the commission's work.

"At the October 10, 2016, public meeting of the Commission, incredibly, three members — one-half of the Commission’s membership — voted to strike from the (draft agency) mission statement the aspirational language, 'furthering Wisconsin’s tradition of clean and open government.' The handwriting was on the wall," Kinney said.

Two Republican commissioners, McCallum and former judge Mac Davis, and one Democratic commissioner, David Halbrooks, voted to change the language. Two Democrats, Lautenschlager and Kinney, and one Republican, former state lawmaker Pat Strachota, voted against changing the language, so the proposal failed to gather the four votes needed to pass.

At a news conference Monday, Walker told reporters he'd like to find out more about why Kinney resigned and his concerns about how the Ethics Commission is running.

"I'd love to sit down and talk with him about that," Walker said.