McCallum pays $13,500 to settle ethics probe
11:56 PM 4/23/03
Dee J. Hall Wisconsin State Journal

Former Gov. Scott McCallum has paid $13,500 to settle two investigations into his free use of a pleasure boat and for a personal trip to Colorado on a state airplane, the state Ethics Board announced Wednesday.

The settlement is the result of probes that began last October into McCallum's use of a boat provided by Mercury Marine during the summer of 2001 and trips on state-owned airplanes in which his family rode along. It is the largest payment the board has ever collected from an individual.

The payment includes a $500 fine for using the boat and $13,000 to repay the state for the cost of a round trip between Madison and Colorado Springs in June 2001 to pick up McCallum and one of his sons from a soccer tournament.

"The board felt that former governor McCallum's acceptance of responsibility and the public release of the investigators' findings were the most important elements of the matters' resolution," Ethics Board director Roth Judd said.

McCallum's attorney, Stephen Hurley, said the former governor was "pleased to have this done with. I think it's a fair settlement of a disputed claim."

Hurley noted that of all the flights the board investigated, McCallum was required to pay only for the Colorado trip.

"I consider this the bill, and I consider it reimbursed," Hurley said.

In several instances, the board found that McCallum and his top staff members claimed not to remember important pieces of information about McCallum's reimbursement of personal travel on state airplanes and the former governor's knowledge about who provided the 21-foot boat.

"There are certainly some extraordinary lapses in memory and an inability to remember key events," Judd said.

On Oct. 7, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that McCallum paid for one questioned trip to Rhode Island eight months after it happened and one day after a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter asked about the trip, which combined official business with a family vacation.

In an interview with the Journal Sentinel on March 8, 2002 - the day after the $3,420.35 check was written - McCallum claimed he could not remember the amount of the check or when he paid it. McCallum told an Ethics Board investigator he said that because "I was irritated with the question."

The investigation into McCallum's use of the state airplanes includes a description of some last-minute payment recalculations after an open records request from the State Journal in the weeks before last fall's election. When the newspaper asked for all personal trips reimbursed by McCallum, top officials from McCallum's office and the state Department of Administration met to devise a new calculation to make the check written in March cover eight personal trips, rather than the two it originally covered, the Ethics Board found.

Included in the recalculation was a May 2002 trip - two and a half months after the check was written - according to one Ethics Board document.

"Whatever the initial billing was for, they started jiggering with the numbers to see how many flights they can cover," Judd said. "Lo and behold, the total amount the governor owed was less than the check paid by Gov. McCallum."

The board began investigating after Jim Doyle's gubernatorial campaign alleged that McCallum may have used state aircraft for personal and campaign purposes without properly reimbursing the state, dubbing the $3,420 payment "one big, elastic check."

The effort to recalculate the trip costs bordered on the comical. To make all eight trips fit, the DOA recalculated the check to include $28.77 for picking up McCallum's father, George, in Fond du Lac, bringing him and the governor to a July 4, 2001, event in Green Bay, and dropping George McCallum back in Fond du Lac.

McCallum told investigators he didn't know about the recalculations because he was out of the office campaigning steadily from June 2002 until the election.

Judd said the board focused on the Colorado trip because it was clear no state business was conducted. Although McCallum tried to claim the trip was warranted because he had a short meeting at the office of the conservative group, Focus on the Family, investigators concluded the visit was "an afterthought" and that his son's soccer tournament was the real reason for the trip.

Ethics Board Chairman James R. Morgan criticized the DOA for its handling of McCallum's personal travel. "Had the Department of Administration been on the ball, this matter would have been addressed on day one, and the state would never have paid for personal flights," Morgan said.

A key question in the Ethics Board's boat investigation was whether McCallum knew it came from Mercury Marine.

McCallum told the board he thought the boat came from the state Department of Natural Resources. In a story that launched the Ethics Board investigation in October, McCallum also told the Journal Sentinel that he did not know that Forward Wisconsin, the public-private agency that McCallum oversaw as chairman of its board, was involved in obtaining the boat.

However, three witnesses disputed McCallum's claims of ignorance. Gordie Ray, a long-time Capitol Police officer, said McCallum bragged to him in the spring of 2001 that Mercury Marine would be providing "Fond du Lac County's favorite son" with a boat to use. McCallum, who is from Fond du Lac, denied making that statement and called Ray a "disgruntled" staffer who was removed from the governor's security detail.

A former campaign fund-raiser for McCallum, Dana Grigoroff, told the board in a sworn statement that McCallum asked her during a September 2001 event at the Governor's Mansion whether she'd seen the boat that Wayne Harris, president of Forward Wisconsin, got for him. McCallum denied making that statement.

In another sworn statement, Melanie Platt-Gibson, marketing director for Forward Wisconsin, said McCallum's office had asked the agency, funded by public and private funds, to provide a boat again in 2002. Platt-Gibson said when she saw McCallum at a June 10, 2002, Forward Wisconsin event, the governor said, "I want the exact same boat" as 2001. McCallum said he doesn't recall making such a statement.