My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:
Josh Kaul, the son of the late disgraced former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, was narrowly elected in the blue wave election of 2018. He was elected with less than 50% of the vote and defeated his Republican opponent by a scant 0.65%. Despite his narrow plurality win, Kaul has used every tool in the attorney general’s box to advocate for his leftist causes at taxpayer expense. Meanwhile, he has failed to fulfill the basic duties of the job to fight crime.
[…]
While Kaul has been acting as the state’s top activist, he has been failing as the state’s top cop. Under his tenure, he has left dozens of state prosecutor jobs unfilled. Fewer prosecutors leads to fewer prosecutions and Kaul has been engaging in his personal “defund the police” action.
The State Crime Lab, which former Attorney General Brad Schimel fixed, has fallen victim to Kaul’s neglect. The turnaround time for routine lab tests has increased by over 30% since Kaul took office. His mismanagement of the State Crime Lab means that criminals are staying on the street longer as police wait anxiously for the evidence they need to arrest them.
The evidence of Kaul’s dereliction is in the crime data. According to FBI crime statistics, Wisconsin’s violent crime rate in 2020 was the highest it had been in 35 years. Milwaukee has already had over 500 non-fatal shootings and over 130 homicides this year. The carnage is real. While Kaul is using his office to advocate for leftist causes, his failures in running the Department of Justice are being measured in dead bodies and ruined lives.
Wisconsin needs an attorney general who will work tirelessly to enforce the laws of the state and put criminals in jail. Josh Kaul has proven time and time again that he will prioritize his personal political causes over that of the people of Wisconsin every time.
Looking at various news stories, this seems to have been a problem that has been brewing for several years under both Republican & Democratic AGs.
Amy Menzel works two jobs: She is an assistant district attorney prosecuting domestic violence cases in Outagamie County and, to make ends meet, she waits tables at an Olive Garden restaurant in Appleton.
“The sad part is that I make more money waitressing,” she said. “Hour for hour, dollar for dollar, I make more money as a waitress.”
Frustrated by stagnant pay and burgeoning workloads, assistant state prosecutors are quitting in droves. And cuts in state spending, combined with disappearing federal grants, have forced layoffs – with more expected to come.
https://archive.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/33422524.html/
Low pay and overwhelming individual caseloads are driving prosecutors from state service, Wetzsteon said. New attorneys, fresh from law school, carry an average student loan debt of more than $122,000, according to federal data, with staggering monthly payments. But new prosecutors in Wisconsin earn just over $49,000 per year — less than half of what they can make at larger firms in the private sector.
In the last state budget, legislators enacted and funded pay progression, authorizing pay raises for many assistant and deputy district attorneys of about 10 percent. But that raise was cut dramatically after Gov. Scott Walker vetoed the change
https://wausaupilotandreview.com/2017/05/03/justice-delayed-prosecutor-shortage-now-a-public-safety-crisis/
A Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau report shows that the state cut prosecutor positions at a time of increased crime statewide. Increased caseloads and a lack of pay progression caused more than half the assistant district attorneys to leave the profession within the last six years. The high turnover and prosecutor shortage have now developed into an unmanageable crisis in our criminal justice system as crime victims and law enforcement officers are underserved
https://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/WisconsinLawyer/Pages/Article.aspx?Volume=81&Issue=3&ArticleID=1488
This is a budgetary issue, and blaming the current AG for the problems in finding & hiring qualified applicants is a nothing more than a partisan attack job.
Trying to appoint Kaul’s partisan dereliction of duty as a budgetary issue is stupid on a level not seen here before.
Then there was the wild goose chase of ‘finding sex predators in churches’ all over again–which came to its end just last week when Little Josh couldn’t find anything worth talking about. It was all show, no go; a typical Democrat play.