Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/category/government/money-and-politics-government/page/6/)
The court’s conservative justices gave a significantly different version of events than their liberal counterparts in their statements to Dane County sheriff’s deputies investigating a June 13 altercation between Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser, according to reports released Friday.
The Dane County Sheriff’s Office this morning released its file on a June 13 incident between Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in which Prosser allegedly put his hands around Bradley’s neck during an argument.
On April 6, lawmakers repealed every aspect of 2009’s so-called “Truth in Auto” law except mandatory auto insurance. Insurance companies argued that the 2009 changes would lead to higher premiums and more people going without insurance. Trial lawyers invoked catastrophic situations in which the disputed auto policy provisions could make the difference in whether accident victims can pay their bills or go bankrupt. Both sides spent heavily to influence the Legislature. But the general public was largely silent.
Last fall, the 41 candidates vying for 17 Wisconsin state Senate seats spent just over $4 million. That seemed like a lot of money at the time, but it’s already been surpassed in the much smaller number of state Senate recall elections now under way.
Gov. Scott Walker has agreed to pay a private law firm up to $500,000 for legal services regarding his controversial budget repair bill curbing public employees’ collective bargaining rights, a spokesman for the governor confirmed.
Gov. Scott Walker signed the budget June 26, effectively ending the state’s 33-year-old system of providing public funding to candidates who agree to abide by overall spending limits.
The Wisconsin Judicial Commission and the Dane County’s Sheriff’s Office announced Monday that they are conducting separate ethical and criminal investigations into an alleged physical altercation between two Wisconsin Supreme Court justices.
Several sources told Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism that an argument before the court’s release of a decision upholding a bill to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employees culminated in a physical altercation in the presence of other justices.
The public is invited to examine the first online archive of top state officials’ 2011 financial disclosure forms, now posted on WisconsinWatch.org, the website for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.