Wisconsin Governor-elect David Crowley admitted in an interview Sunday that he personally knew two weeks before the election that his Milwaukee County budget had an unexpected $4.56 million gap but did not inform the County Board until the day after.
If he did so with the intent of helping his gubernatorial bid by hiding the budget gap from voters until he was safely elected Governor, that may constitute criminal misconduct in public office under state law.
Wisconsin Statute § 946.12(3) makes it a Class I felony for “any public officer or public employee” to, “whether by act of commission or omission, use their position to “exercise a discretionary power in a manner inconsistent with the duties of [their] office or employment or the rights of others and with intent to obtain a dishonest advantage.”
In plain English, this means that if Crowley or anyone in his Milwaukee County Executive’s office used their discretionary power to delay the disclosure of the budget gap to give Crowley a political advantage in the governor’s race, they have committed misconduct in public office. Critically, gaining this dishonest advantage may be done by omission, meaning that if Crowley or anyone speaking on his behalf intentionally omitted disclosure of the budget gap with the intent of helping him politically, they have committed a felony.
The available evidence suggests that this is the case.
Milwaukee County Budget Director Nick Sinram said in a memo to the Milwaukee County Board on November 4, the day after the election and the day before the Board voted on Crowley’s budget, that it had discovered the $4.56 million hole in the budget on October 20. He admitted that he told Crowley’s office about the gap that day and Crowley has now confirmed that he personally was aware of it.
No one said a word, though even though the Milwaukee County Board’s Committee on Finance was actively reviewing the budget at the time, and the Crowley Administration had multiple opportunities to inform members of the error and their efforts to fix it. The Budget Committee made amendments to the budget on both October 22 and 23 and then held a public hearing on it at the Milwaukee Art Museum on October 26.
Even more significantly, Sinram testified before the Committee on Finance on October 30 and presented a package of minor corrections that needed to be made before the budget moved out of committee and on to the full Board for a vote on final passage November 5. Sinram allowed that to happen without bringing up the most significant correction that needed to be made.
Why not? He claimed on November 4, one day after the election and less than 24 hours before the Board vote, that it was because he chose to “bring solutions to the Board, not just problems.”
“You did not have solutions until the day after the election?” asked an incredulous news reporter.
“It takes time,” Sinram responded. “It’s a complicated budget issue, uh, we need to make sure that we have investigated completely, thoroughly, and come with realistic solutions for the County Board.”
The Board’s Finance Committee Chairman, Steve Taylor, said this was not even remotely true.
“I mean that’s just an awful excuse,” he said. “They knew what the issue was, and to tell me it took two weeks to come up with the solution is just ridiculous.”
Taylor added that the County Executive’s office didn’t actually provide a solution, but rather presented a three-page memo on potential new revenue projections or cost savings that may offset the $4.56 million gap over the next year.
“If it takes two weeks to deliver a three-page memo, then we’ve got real problems,” Taylor said.
His point is a salient one and may in fact be the key to determining whether this was a politically motivated intentional omission and thus a potentially criminal effort at obtaining a dishonest advantage for Crowley’s gubernatorial bid.
Why did it take exactly 15 days to craft those solutions and not, say, 10 days? 10 days would have been an ample amount of time to write and present a three-page memo to the County Board’s Finance Committee at its October 30 meeting—a meeting at which Sinram was presenting other necessary corrections to the budget.
This very strongly suggests an intentional omission, and if it can be proven that it was done to help Crowley’s political fortunes, then it is very likely misconduct in public office.
The available evidence also strongly suggests that this was in fact the reason for the omission. The primary line of attack against Crowley was for months that he was a tax-and-spend liberal who ran massive budget shortfalls throughout his six-year tenure as Milwaukee County Executive.
On October 1, Crowley delivered his annual Budget Address and presented a budget that he claimed was fully balanced without raising property taxes. His gubernatorial campaign then released an ad touting that fact.
The discovery of a multimillion-dollar budget gap in the late stages of the campaign would have undercut the Crowley campaign’s entire narrative and given his Republican opponent, Rep. Tom Tiffany, an opportunity to attack him.
The fact that the election was not particularly close and that said attacks almost certainly would not have changed the outcome are both irrelevant. Misconduct in office occurs when a public official or employee uses his position to gain a dishonest advantage.
If it can be proven that Crowley, Sinram, or anyone else working on their behalf deliberately concealed the budget gap to preserve the Crowley gubernatorial campaign’s narrative and avoid attacks from Tiffany is a deliberate act of omission that obtained a dishonest advantage for Crowley and thus constitutes misconduct in public office.
