Lawmakers need to focus on issues people care about

Quite a battle is brewing in Madison. Unfortunately, it is not a battle over an issue that voters actually care about. The power struggle is over who should lead the commissions that oversee elections and ethics in Wisconsin. Lawmakers voted to remove the heads of those two commissions, accusing them of being too partisan. We have heard all this before. Three years ago, lawmakers voted to blow up the Government Accountability Board which at the time oversaw elections and ethics issues. The claim was the group was too partisan, and was unfair to republicans. So they created the State Ethics Commission and the State Elections Commission. But now they think because the heads of those agencies previously worked at the GAB, they must be a bunch of liberals. A legal fight may be brewing to allow the heads of the commissions to retain their posts. In the meantime, who is in charge of elections in Wisconsin remains unclear. The elections commission oversees the state’s elections and helps local clerks run them. Elections are coming soon, with a primary election scheduled next month. This power struggle isn’t doing anything to make life better for Wisconsinites. Our lawmakers need to settle on a system for overseeing elections and ethics that is free from partisanship and stick with it. Then they can move on to issues people really care about.