Last spring Assembly GOP Leader Mike Huebsch – who has personally campaigned for Julie Pung-Leschke – led an effort to kill an important government ethics bill. In doing so, Huebsch declared on the floor of the Assembly that there was no need for reform because Wisconsin ’s laws were a “model for the nation.”
All while Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen had been sentenced to prison for felony misconduct in office just days later.
What Huebsch essentially said was that sure we’ve spent the past five years reading about; pay for play, kickbacks, campaign on state time, sure we’ve seen five legislators convicted in the past year, but it’s really not our problem.
For this Huebsch was lambasted in newspapers from Beloit to Green Bay, but that didn’t stop him from passing the talking points onto his hand-picked candidates.
Case in point, Julie Pung-Leschke, who thinks that the best way to clean up the system is for voters to do a better job of paying attention.
Rather than strengthening the law, Pung-Leschke would rather have voters “sift through the multitude of information available to them.” She also would rather see unethical lawmakers answer to the “electorate” than prosecution. ( Oshkosh Northwestern 9/1/06)
Please.
Lets set aside the fact that the same person who quit the county board because it was “too much work” thinks voters need to devote time to “sifting through the multitude” and just focus on some of the other problems with this argument.
- How are people supposed to know where candidates stand when candidates, such as Pung-Leschke herself, wait months to turn in questionnaires or don’t turn them in at all?
- Unregulated special interest groups spend thousands – or in the case of Pung-Leschke $70,000 – on negative ads meant to distort the record and confuse voters.
- If Pung-Leschke had her way Scott Jensen would be lining up lobbying contracts instead of awaiting a prison sentence.
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