.
The Department of Justice has armed its employees in Madison and around the state with talking points on how to combat proposed cuts to the agency in hopes they’ll lobby state lawmakers to reverse them.
But officials said Wednesday the lobbying effort is voluntary.
“These people are fighting, quite frankly, for their jobs,” Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen told reporters today about the effort.
While it’s legal for rank-and-file state workers to lobby on state time, the practice is unique, according to lawmakers and a state ethics specialist.
At issue are proposed cuts in the budget slated for an Assembly vote next week that Van Hollen said are disproportionate with other agencies. Those include a 5 percent, $2.7 million cut the Republican attorney general says some other agencies aren’t absorbing.
He said there will be less environmental and consumer protection enforcement, and that DOJ’s public safety mission could be compromised, if the 5 percent cut isn’t restored. About 80 people would be laid off, he said, under the cuts.
Van Hollen, a Republican, said there’s “no explanation other than partisanship” for the cuts.
But Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget committee, which wrote the budget, said the cuts represent the “shared sacrifice” asked of all agencies and that “everyone seems to understand that except the Attorney General.”
Pocan said DOJ’s budget has increased 17 percent in the last two-and-a-half years.
Jonathan Becker, an ethics specialist and lawyer for the Government Accountability Board, said state employees can lobby lawmakers under state law. They don’t have to register with the board unless lobbying is a regular part of their duties, he said.
“They’re doing it for the agency, so it’s state business,” he said.
Becker also said DOJ officials checked with him to make sure the practice was legal.
But Becker also said he doesn’t recall a state agency ever inquiring with him about whether employees could lobby lawmakers.
And Pocan, who said Wednesday he had not returned a phone message left for him by one DOJ employee, said the practice was “kind of unprecedented.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that,” he said of the lobbying.
DOJ spokesman Kevin St. John said employees were told that lobbying lawmakers on the budget is voluntary, but that feedback the agency has received from employees shows many of them are making the calls. He said DOJ is not keeping track of which employees make the contact but that some information on who is doing so is filtering back to top executives.
Carrie Lynch, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, said she spoke with two DOJ employees Tuesday about the cuts. The employees were stationed in Decker’s central Wisconsin district, Lynch said, but she wouldn’t reveal their names.
“They were given some sort of script and told to read it,” Lynch said. “It’s interesting. I’ve never seen another agency tell their employees to call us about the budget.”
A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, was unable to immediately comment on the lobbying.
The other budget co-chairman, Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, had received about six calls from DOJ employees as of Wednesday morning, an aide said.
.
Advertisement 
