Disclosure & Transparency

What a year 2021 has been!

Heck said 30 years ago, paid junkets were almost unheard of. And he says state ethics rules that prohibit lawmakers from accepting “anything of value” need to be tightened up.

"Special interests are paying for it and everybody thinks that has an influence on what legislators are thinking and doing — because you're getting a free trip," said Jay Heck, director of the government watchdog group Common Cause in Wisconsin. "Of course you're going to be affected when you get a free trip ... That's just human nature."

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel planned to keep secret a $4,100 trip last year that was funded by a Christian legal organization accused of being a hate group, according to newly released records.

In sorting through the Common Cause Wisconsin office recently, we came across a press release from then-State Representative Scott Walker (R-Wauwatosa) proposing that all out-of-state groups that spend money in Wisconsin elections disclose where those funds came from. He strongly supported the type of full disclosure of the donors of outside money that Wisconsin has needed for two decades.