Wausau Mayor Doug Diny moving an absentee ballot dropbox. Image courtesy: Doug Diny
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – We now know the date – April 3rd – when the Wausau ethics genie will be out of the bottle, and there’ll be no way to put it back. April 3rd is the date when the Ethics Committee will meet, and decide if the complaint against Mayor Doug Diny will more forward. It’s a foregone conclusion that it will.
And the citizens of Wausau should ask themselves how such a thin allegation could possibly be advanced. If you recall the mayor removed an unsecured and locked absentee ballot drop box from outside of City Hall last fall. Eight citizens have filed a complaint alleging that the mayor made it more difficult for citizens to cast their ballots. Nothing could be further from the truth – the drop box was locked; no one could have placed anything inside of it.
We have since learned that the city’s ethics board may not be properly constituted. Three members have terms that expire on the same date. They are supposed to be staggered. Can the results of the committee be legitimate if its make-up isn’t?
There are also some ethics problems with members who sit on the committee. The committee chair – Kay Palmer – sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney calling for a federal voting rights investigation into the mayor. And she was going to sit in judgment of the mayor until that letter came to light. She has since recused herself. Mayor Diny’s attempt to appoint an alternate to the committee was blocked by the city council. Doug Hosler, who also sits on the ethics committee, was a campaign donor to former Mayor Katie Rosenberg. He received a curious fundraising phone call from Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, which happened – ironically – on the same day as the last Ethics Committee meeting. Kaul is also conducting a state investigation into Mayor Diny. And Jesse Kearns sits on the Ethics Committee, whom the mayor defeated in a close city council race.
The mayor’s political opponents are those who will sit in judgement of him. And the permise of the complaint – that the mayor blocked people from casting their ballots – is fundamentally untrue. Why can’t the ethics committee see what is so obvious to everyone else?
Chris Conley
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