GOP Senate Hurts Evers’ Talent Searches

Gov. Tony Evers. Photo by Emily Hamer / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is looking for cabinet secretaries for two important state agencies – the Department of Corrections (DOC) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR). DNR has not had a leader since October and the DOC since March.

But consider the challenges in pondering the DOC job, If you’re a law enforcement or criminal justice professional.

DOC houses 22,000 adult inmates and supervises 63,000 more on probation and parole. It has 9,600 employees and an annual budget of $1.5 billion, but vacancy rates at overcrowded prisons have exceeded 50%, forcing extensive overtime. Two of its maximum-security prisons were built in the 1800s. DOC is scrutinized by national news media, including the New York Times. If Evers appoints you, and he doesn’t seek re-election in two years, you’re likely out of a job in 30 months.

But there’s one more consideration: If Republicans keep control of the state Senate in Nov. 5 elections, GOP senators could fire you.

Still interested?

In a Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) interview earlier this year, Evers said Republican senators rejecting several of his appointments — starting with the 2019 firing of the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection — makes it hard to find qualified administrators and policy makers.

“We’ll get somebody. We’ll get a good person,” Evers told WPR, discussing his search for a DNR secretary. “But to have that hanging over their head, and then having decisions being made by that person based upon ‘Am I going to be hired, approved by the Senate?’ That’s just wrong.”

Asked about the vacancies last week, Britt Cudaback, the governor’s communications director, discussed the search for a DNR secretary and DNR board members.

“This search process has not been aided by the hyper-partisan state Senate repeatedly firing the governor’s appointees, including, for example, several members of the Natural Resources Board,” Cudaback said.

“Finding the right talented and well-qualified person who’s willing to leave their current employment for a full-time position in public service is difficult as it is,” she added, “but finding someone who’s willing take on a new position in which they may do their job exceptionally well and still be fired abruptly – for no reason other than petty, partisan politics – makes it even more challenging.”

The governor plans to soon name a DNR secretary, Cudaback said.

Evers made criminal justice reform, including reducing the number of prison inmates, an issue in his first campaign for governor in 2018.

He repeated that in his first budget message to the Republican-controlled Legislature in February 2019 and every year since has pushed to legalize medical and recreational marijuana.

But major criminal justice reform has never been considered by Republican leaders. Legalizing medical marijuana was debated last session but did not become law.

With one exception – better pay for guards – Wisconsin’s prison, parole and probation systems haven’t changed. Whether reforms get new attention in the next legislative session depends on legislators who get elected in November.

DOC’s problems have made national news. A February story by the New York Times and Wisconsin Watch concluded, “An extreme shortage of guards at Wisconsin’s prisons has slowed basic operations to a crawl.”

DOC Secretary Kevin Carr retired weeks later.

Last August, the Times also documented extensive lockdowns, scarce medical care and staffing shortages at the Waupun maximum-security prison that inmates helped build in 1851.

Last month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that 55 persons died in the custody of the prison system in 2023.

Evers and northeast Wisconsin Republican legislators and civic leaders are at an impasse over how to replace the Green Bay maximum-security prison built in 1898. Former inmates have a name for that prison – “gladiator school” – because of its violence.

Evers and progressive legislators won’t commit to replacing the Green Bay institution without other major reforms.

Last year, Republican legislators finally raised the starting pay for prison guards to $33 per hour – a change that has begun to cut vacancy rates in some prisons.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says that made a big difference: “By February, the vacancy rate had dropped to an average of 25% and DOC is graduating a record number of officers from its training program.”

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who Evers defeated in 2018, did not visit a prison in his eight years as chief executive.

Walker aides felt that no good news could come from DOC, whose officials once noted that prison inmates had rebuilt wheelchairs that military veterans could use on their Angel Flights to Washington, D.C., monuments. But a Walker aide killed the idea of using that as a favorable publicity event.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com