Conservatively Speaking

DOC defends administrator's commute from Illinois

Posted by Mary Lazich on Oct. 27, 2010

During August 2010, the Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) released a report about the Division of Gaming that included details about reimbursements for a staff attorney.I blogged:

“The LAB suggested the expenditures pertaining to the Division’s full-time legal counsel be monitored closely to ensure they are reasonable and necessary. The Chicago home of the Division staff attorney has been designated his office headquarters. From fiscal year 2006-07 through fiscal year 2008-09, the Division reimbursed him $26,300 for mileage between his home and the Division’s office and for food and lodging while he stayed in Madison. The LAB reports, ‘Division officials believe that the experience and specialized knowledge of this employee justify this unusual arrangement, and they assert that contracting for legal services would have resulted in substantially higher costs’.”

The same month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that an administrator with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) was commuting to Wisconsin from his home in Illinois using a state vehicle. The Journal Sentinel wrote:

“The state employee in charge of responding at a moment's notice to riots and other disturbances in Wisconsin prisons recently moved to Illinois, more than 90 miles away from his office in Madison.

The employee also received an exemption to state policy requiring him to keep his specially equipped emergency response vehicle at his home overnight. The same policy forbids the car, a 2008 Chevrolet Impala similar to a police cruiser equipped with a special two-way radio, to be driven outside of Wisconsin.

Under an agreement reached with the head of the Department of Corrections, Division of Adult Institutions Administrator Bill Grosshans parks the car in an elementary school lot overnight in tiny Hazel Green, about 5 miles from his home in Galena, Ill.”

Read more here. 

I sought further explanation from the DOC about this, unusual to say the least, arrangement. The DOC informs that Bill Grosshans awakes every day at 3:00 a.m. to drive to work in Madison. Grosshans, according to the DOC, puts in more work hours than anyone else and is never out of communication. The state requires that Grosshans have the vehicle; however, the vehicle must remain in Wisconsin, so Grosshans is allowed to keep the car parked near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. Since Grosshans is retiring at the end of this year, DOC made an exception for a short period of time for a veteran employee that has a record of working hard.

The rationale offered by DOC doesn’t come close to being satisfactory. This type of arrangement should never have been approved. Wisconsin’s next governor needs to put an immediate halt to such practices.