Protesters outside City Hall in Wausau. MWC photo by Mike Leischner
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Eight Wausau citizens have filed an ethics complaint against Wausau Mayor Doug Diny. They are: Jay Coldwell, Kurt Hase, Thea Territo, Pamela Bannister, Lila Hobson, Jerry Phelan, Scott Bryan, and Bart Hobson. They say the mayor exceeded his authority by removing an unsecured absentee ballot drop box from outside of City Hall last year.
News of the ethics complaint was made public in a news release from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign – a liberal political action group. You can guess who drafted the complaint and found eight local libs to sign it. The spin that the eight complainants were setting around in a Starbucks and randomly decided that they were outraged about the drop box removal is comically unbelievable.
The allegation is that Mayor Doug Diny acted unlawfully by trying to intimidate city clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde into not using a drop box for the fall election, and that the mayor interfered with people casting their votes by removing it.
This ethics complaint is partisan politics. And there are some inconvenient facts, like:
Wausau’s city clerk is an employee of the city, not an elected official. The clerk is part of the mayor’s administration. Some argue that the use of drop boxes across Wisconsin is solely at the discretion of local clerks. That’s the exact problem with our liberal state Supreme Court making up the law as they wish it were. If there was a law, written by the legislature and signed by the governor, there’d be clarity on who decides about drop boxes. No such law has even been passed in Wisconsin.
The drop box, when it was wheeled away by the Mayor, had a lock on it and was not in use. While locked, no one could have deposited a ballot inside it.
The mayor wheeled the drop box away before early voting had begun. So the number of voters who could have legally used the drop box but were denied the chance to do so was exactly zero. No one.
The mayor is the chief executive of the city. He has the final say over what is and isn’t allowed on city property, including the plaza outside of City Hall.
The mayor has correctly noted that the drop box was not secured or bolted down. If it were indeed able to accept ballots, those ballots were unsecured. Anyone with a small pick-up truck could have absconded with those ballots.
And the mayor is an elected official. If voters disagree with the decisions he makes in office, they’re free to vote for someone else. This ethics complaint, and the criminal investigation from our Democrat-controlled state Department of Justice, are thinly veiled attempts to smear a duly elected conservative mayor.
This ethics complaint is bogus. The eight who signed their names to it are being used as political tools.
Chris Conley
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