Last week’s stories about the state Department of Transportation’s handling of Dennis Troha’s tax bills present the question: Did Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration roll over for a big campaign contributor? Reading the front-page, top-of-fold stories in the Journal Sentinel, the answer is a resounding yes. Reading the Wisconsin State Journal, you’d almost conclude the opposite. So who’s right?
First, a bit of background: Wisconsin is required by the International Fuel Tax Agreement to make sure its trucking companies pay fuel taxes they owe for driving in other states. Thus, Wisconsin had to get involved in the case of Troha, who owned several trucking companies that owed some $1 million in fuel taxes to other states. In theory, the state must operate as an honest broker, but it’s possible a friend of business like Doyle (and his cheerleading predecessor Tommy Thompson) might be sort of helpful to a home company, even while cooperating with other states. An ongoing FBI investigation might be targeted at Doyle officials or simply looking for more dirt on Troha.
The State Journal’s lead story about this was entitled “FBI Seeking Information From State On Tax Cases,” and emphasized state DOT attorney Bob Jambois’ assurance of full cooperation with the investigation. A DOT attorney had successfully settled Troha’s bill with Pennsylvania and Nevada, and officials in both states thanked them for the effort, Jambois noted. The story raised the issue of whether a campaign contributor like Troha got undue attention, but emphasized Jambois’ point: The Troha tax case got unusual attention because the amount of money owed was so large.
That same day’s JS story led with the headline “Troha tax bills got special attention from the state.” The lead suggested Troha got “virtually unprecedented” state help because DOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi promised this to Troha’s attorney Bill Jennaro, according to an e-mail. The story quoted former DOT finance director Alice Morehouse saying she could think of no case “that elevated itself to this level,” one in which state officials offered similar treatment for any other company. But in the next day’s State Journal story, Morehouse said it was the amount of money at dispute, not officials’ handling of it, that made the case unusual.
Even worse, the JS story’s third graph said that Busalacchi met with Troha in April 2004, before having an attorney travel to Illinois, another state where Troha had a disputed tax bill. But within two days, both Jennaro and Busalacchi denied that Busalacchi was at this meeting. Yet on Saturday, a day after this revelation, a JS story again repeated that Busalacchi met with Troha.
The JS was commendably aggressive in going after the e-mail, but there’s still no smoking gun in a story given such prominence. And the paper’s Saturday follow-up story giving the Doyle administration’s side was demoted to the front page of the Metro section. The State Journal, by contrast, seems a tad soft, but its approach was echoed by the Associated Press, which all but buried this controversy with a couple paragraphs at the back of a related story.
Meanwhile, there is a broader context to this story, one that raises questions about the aggressive prosecution of Troha.
The administration of President George Bush has caused a furor by replacing eight U.S. attorneys, with accusations that they were axed for the sin of investigating Republicans or not going after enough Democrats. If true, this raises the question whether those U.S. attorneys who were not replaced have cooperated with the Bush administration by aggressively investigating Democratic officials.
The U.S. attorney from Milwaukee, Steve Biskupic, has done an admirable job of going after three Milwaukee aldermen and former state Sen. Gary George, all Democrats. He has also launched several investigations embarrassing the Doyle administration, including the current probe of Troha. Biskupic’s first Doyle-related probe involved state employee Georgia Thompson, a case that I criticized. Thompson had been appointed by a Republican, had never made a political contribution, and as a civil service appointee, had no reason to fear she could be fired for taking an action the Doyle administration disapproved. Yet after Biskupic failed to show any wrongdoing by any Doyle political appointee who supervised Thompson, he went after this low-level employee for a minor infraction and sent her to jail.
Perhaps this was just overaggressiveness by Biskupic. But the timing seemed curious, coming amid a re-election campaign by Doyle. Biskupic has recently and repeatedly stressed that he’s a nonpartisan prosecutor. I hope that’s true. But so far, he’s helped generate more then a year’s worth of lurid JS headlines about the Doyle administration, while not one official has been charged with anything.
Judge Ziegler’s Meltdown
I don’t see how Judge Annette Ziegler can or should get elected to the state Supreme Court. I say this despite my column of last week suggesting that financial conflicts for judges are not uncommon.
Here is the latest: The liberal blog One Wisconsin Now claims Ziegler and her husband have borrowed some $3 million from the West Bend Savings Bank. Ziegler’s campaign manager Mark Graul told me the correct amount was $2 million, including $1.5 million owed on a $2 million line of credit and another $500,000 for loans on their home. Ziegler’s husband is also a paid member of the bank’s board of directors, and makes additional money through his real estate firm which leases space to the bank.
Yet Judge Ziegler heard at least 40 cases involving West Bend Savings Bank, declining to recuse herself and, in cases where the media has checked, failing to inform parties to the case of her conflict.
There is no way Judge Ziegler could not know about all these conflicts. There is no way a $2 million conflict could be seen by any judge as “de minimis” – meaning too insignificant under the judicial code to present any potential conflict of interest.
But it gets worse. The Sunday State Journal (which continues to beat the JS in reporting this story) found Ziegler has also presided over 22 cases involving companies in which she owns at least $50,000 in stock. The case files gave no indication that Ziegler withdrew from the cases or notified the parties that she was a stockholder of the respective companies, the story noted.
Ziegler may turn into a poster child for a problem first exposed by Milwaukee Magazine: Our February feature story “On Their Honor” showed financial conflicts are not uncommon for judges.
There’s no doubt reform is needed, and Graul suggested Ziegler, as a Supreme Court justice, would be open to any discussion of reforming the judicial code.
That would be a fine solution for the lesser financial conflicts described in the magazine’s story. But any judge who can’t understand that a $2 million interest in a company disqualifies her from presiding over a case involving that company is arguably unfit to be a Circuit Court judge, much less a member of the state’s highest court. Ziegler has made herself unelectable.
The Angry Spice Boy
Cary Spivak feels my column from a few weeks ago unfairly suggested he and Dan Bice had a falling out. I don’t know that it did, but for the record, my sources say the Spice Boys column died because Spivak wanted to join the paper’s new investigative team, not because of any personality dispute.
Most of that column concentrated on the Spice Boys’ style, a cheap detective novel mode of writing I attributed to Spivak. Sure enough, the new solo column by Dan Bice, “No Quarter,” has none of Spivak’s tough-guy prose. Indeed, it’s a bit dry and voiceless. But Spivak and Bice started slowly too. Bice may establish his own style yet.
And don’t miss critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
