Just doing our jobs, Jensen & Co. say; raising money full-time on taxpayers' tab

You have to give them credit for trying, I guess, and for doing exhaustive research and making creative arguments.

But the latest claim by lawyers for Scott Jensen, Steve Foti, and Sherry Schultz , the Republicans charged with felonies in the caucus scandal -- that the three were just doing their jobs -- is simply incredible. WisPolitics story.

Jensen was the Assembly speaker, Foti the GOP majority leader, and Schultz an Assembly staffer. They were indicted in 2002, and have been trying to postpone the inevitable ever since. So far that has worked pretty well. October 18 will be the three-year anniversary of their indictments, and a trial is nowhere in sight.

Foti has left the legislature, and Schultz is off the state payroll. But Jensen continues on his merry way, as a key member of the Joint Finance Committee that put the state budget together.

Jensen simply has no shame. The latest argument from his lawyer goes something like this: "Jensen, Foti, and Schultz were just doing what they were supposed to be doing -- that part of their jobs was to elect more Republicans to office. So of course they were doing some campaign work in their Capitol offices. What's your point, prosecutor?"

The basis for that claim is a 1986 report prepared for Common Cause in Wisconsin by Gail Shea, a former employee of the State Elections Board. Shea's report says that "Legislative campaign committees hire consultants for a variety of purposes . . . In some cases the consultants are nationally known political experts, but most often they are politically active individuals from Wisconsin or legislative staffers, either currently on the state payroll or on leave from their legislative jobs."

"It is important to keep in mind that the legislative campaign committees claim they fill a role very similar to a political party," Shea's report says. "Their purpose is to elect partisans to their respective house of the Legislature."

Jensen's lawyer claims that means there are no limits on what an elected official can do at taxpayer expense, apparently.

Lest we forget, one of the felony charges against Jensen, Foti, and Schultz is that Schultz worked full-time, on the state payroll, paid $65,000 a year by taxpayers, and her full-time job was to raise money for Republicans. Jensen hired her and stashed her in the Republican caucus office, on Foti's payroll.

That arrangement went on for almost four years, so taxpayers paid Schultz $250,000 in salary, plus a great benefit package probably worth another $50,000 over that period. That is not penny ante corner-cutting. That is grand larceny.

It is quite a leap from Shea's memo to the conclusion that it would be legal to operate a full-time political fundraising operation in your Capitol office, at taxpayer expense. If that is legal, why on earth does any campaign or political party pay anyone? They could all be state employees, merrily working to elect their bosses or others in their party. That's their job, right -- elect more Rs or Ds.

Jensen, Foti and Schultz made much the same argument in a brief filed in December 2002 -- and failed. Story. The only thing that has changed since then is that someone dug up the Shea memo in the Legislative Reference Bureau.

But if attorney general opinions don't have the force of law, it doesn't seem like a Common Cause memo will either.

I am beginning to wonder whether any of the caucus defendants -- Jensen, Foti, Schultz, ex-State Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, or ex-State Sens. Chuck Chvala and Brian Burke will come to trial in my lifetime -- or in theirs. The public has mostly forgotten what they were ever charged with to begin with. Presumably, although the wheels of justice grind excruciatingly slowly, they will turn some day.

They say that justice delayed is justice denied. In the caucus scandal, it is the defendants who delay, delay and delay. In Jensen's case, it is the public, and his constituents, who are being denied the opportunity to find out whether they reelected a felon to the Assembly in 2002 and 2004.

Original criminal complaint.

Latest filing

UPDATE: Jensen didn't invent system, just took it to new heights. Link to later post.