Time sheets allowed state workers to blur public, private duties
10:27 AM 9/05/02
Phil Brinkman State government reporter
indentWhen Attorney General Jim Doyle was asked last week about allegations two of his state aides may have engaged in campaign activities while on state time, his response provoked a sense of dj vu among political insiders.
indent"I know how hard those people have worked, and I have no doubt that they've put in many more than the 40 hours a week," Doyle said last week when asked about the claims, first raised by the state Republican Party and pressed by one of his opponents for the Democratic nomination for governor, U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett.
indentBill Christofferson, a top Doyle adviser, offered a similar explanation days earlier.
indent"As the Republican Party knows full well, state jobs are not 9 to 5," Christofferson said. "The attorney general's staff, like the governor's staff, often have to be somewhere before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. and work well beyond the minimum 40 hours required as state time."
indentThe problem with those statements, some say, is that they sound a lot like the explanations legislators used last year to justify sending state employees all over Wisconsin to work on campaigns while taxpayers assumed they were working for them.
indentThen, as now, employee time sheets make it difficult to assess who's telling the truth.
indent"It sounds very familiar," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which pushed for a state investigation last year into allegations of misuse of state resources by legislative caucus employees.
indentLawyers representing legislators and staff caught up in the yearlong probe into the legislative caucuses have also taken note of Doyle's comments and say some will likely remind him of them if any of their clients are charged with using their state staffs to run campaigns.
indent"It clearly will come back to haunt him," said one attorney involved in the caucus investigation who asked not to be identified for fear of drawing attention to his client.
indentWhile prosecutors continue to investigate the caucuses, the state Ethics and Elections boards eventually reached a settlement with the legislative leadership that included abolishing the caucus staffs. A key feature of that settlement was the imposition of a new time-accounting system for all legislative staff.
indentUnder the old system, staff had only to record the number of hours of vacation, sick leave or unpaid leave they took in a given month. No other time sheets were kept. The arrangement begged to be abused, as some staffers spent days or entire weeks working on campaigns.
indentWhile workers often claimed some vacation or leave time during those periods, it commonly was a fraction of the time they actually spent away from their state jobs, the Wisconsin State Journal reported in a series last year. But it provided essential cover in case they were spotted campaigning on any given work day, since they could claim they were on vacation at the time.
indentUnder rules imposed last fall, however, legislative staffers now must record every event of their day - start and stop times, lunch, or stray hours of vacation time - to the nearest 15 minutes of when the event occurred. They also must sign a statement attesting they did not engage in any campaign activity while on the job. If they plan to campaign while on vacation, they must report that in advance.
indentBut the reporting requirements don't apply to the executive and judicial branches of state government. Reform advocates say the recent allegations against Doyle's staff suggest the rules should be applied to those areas of government as well - especially for staff working for elected partisan officials such as governor and attorney general.
indent"I would think after what has happened it would be smart to institute some uniform policy," said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.
indentEmployee time reporting in the executive branch isn't nearly as lax as the old legislative system was. But neither is it as precise as the system now in place in the Legislature. Hourly employees in most agencies have a set work schedule, and any deviations from that are supposed to be noted in a separate column for each day.
indentBut the sheets don't require employees to note which hours they claimed for vacation or sick leave. That still makes it possible to blur the line between state time and campaign time, Heck said.Roth Judd, executive director of the Ethics Board, which pushed for the tighter reporting requirements on the Legislature last year, said extending the system to the executive branch is "worthy of consideration." Besides improving accountability, such a system could protect employees, he said.
indentCampaign spokesman John Kraus said Doyle would consider reviewing how executive branch employees record their time if he is elected and reform seems warranted. "But that is up to the current governor at this point," Kraus said.
indent"If that system was in place, including time sheets that show when staffers in the attorney general's office start and end work, there would be no questions about the number of hours (staff) worked," Kraus said. "They have both given the taxpayers more than their money's worth and have consistently worked long hours."
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