A legislative committee has voted unanimously to audit the Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin's elections agency.
The non-partisan audit approved Tuesday would look at all facets of the board, including its management, its financial oversight, its training of clerks and the way it investigates and resolves complaints.
Audit Committee co-Chair Robert Cowles, a Republican state senator from Green Bay, says the "major audit" was suggested to him by former Legislative Audit Bureau Director Jan Mueller when she retired from that job: “Not because she suspected anything wrong, [but] because it simply had never been audited in her long tenure. ... So she thought it was a good idea to look at the whole thing.”
The legislature was under split control when it created the Government Accountability Board in 2007. The board's decisions have occasionally been criticized by both parties but most frequently by majority Republicans, with some GOP leaders threatening to dismantle the board.
Madison Assembly Democrat Melissa Sargent was among those who voted for the audit Tuesday, but she sounded a note of caution. “I hope this is not something that we're all saying on the surface is, 'We're all working together, we're in this for the right reasons,' but underneath, we're looking for some sort of tool to dismantle this organization.”
Because the audit is so broad, the Legislative Audit Bureau says it likely won't be done until next Spring.
