Vos attack on GAB speeds decline in official WI ethics

I am glad the Journal Sentinel included in an editorial today the important role in ethics oversight played by the Government Accountability Board.

Election, lobbying, and campaign reporting and regulatory supervision are activities often associated with the GAB, but it's important to remember that enforcement of the state's ethics code for state elected officials falls to the GAB, and, as the editorial says, it would be a bad idea to undo the GAB's non-partisan structure and put it under the parties' direct control as threatened by GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

Two months ago, I wrote that the GOP was looking for broad, embedded advantage:

Now they're after partisan control of elections, lobbying law and official ethics, too. 

Making no secret of the plan. 

How much one-party rule will other elected officials and editorial board watchdogs in this state tolerate as Wisconsin is permanently consigned to the backwaters?

Ultimately, the decision is Scott Walker's. He can shut down Vos' mean-spirited power play and ploy with a phone call, but I suspect Walker will let Vos play it out, leaving Walker free of any taint until he signs into law what he will claim with a straight face is the will of the Legislature.

You would think that Vos' plan would be rejected on its demerits, its blatant self-interest timed to coincide with the GOP's unilateral control of state government and the incomplete investigation into Walker's campaign with outside groups which were not supposed to be coordinated.

Actually, the timing of the attack on the GAB is about as wrong as Vos could get it: aren't the already-revealed secret big-dollar coordinated donations slipped into 2012 GOP recall campaigns, the big-donor written 'code of ethics' covering the Wisconsin State Supreme Court and the heavily-secret redistricting plan controlled by GOP legislative leaders enough evidence Wisconsin needs more and not less independent ethics, campaign and election supervision?