State Assembly speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, called for changes to the Government Accountability Board and the removal of its executive director, Kevin Kennedy.
“Kevin Kennedy has to go, he needs to be gone, he is an embarrassment, and I can’t say it any more emphatically than I am right now,” Vos said in a WisPolitics luncheon Tuesday.
The GAB is a nonpartisan review board composed of six former judges nominated by the governor and confirmed in the state Senate. It is responsible for overseeing Wisconsin elections.
Vos did not limit his criticism of the GAB to just Kennedy but extended it to the entire agency.
“I promise you, that two years from now, when we are sitting here, the GAB will not be in the current format that it is currently put together,” Vos said during the luncheon. “It is dysfunctional, it is unresponsive, and it is totally undemocratic.”
Vos cited the GAB’s handling of a newly designed ballot as one of the prominent causes of his frustration with the agency.
Concerning the new ballot, Vos said Kennedy “never told the legislator, never told any of the committee chairs, never told the GAB, or the public or the clerks that they are going to do this redesign.”
Vos, a previous supporter of Kennedy and the GAB, was adamant for his removal and hoped to start discussion about changing the GAB in early 2015, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
Vos described the entire situation as “embarrassing for Wisconsin.”
