MILWAUKEE, Wis. – This week, David Crowley announced his anti-corruption policy platform which focuses on accountability, transparency, and restoring public trust in government. Crowley’s plan focuses on four key policies that aim to limit regulators from using their positions of power to profit on the taxpayer dime and ban insider trading.

Crowley’s Anti-Corruption Platform:

  • Ban Politicians from Insider Trading on Stocks: elected officials will be banned from trading individual stocks or profiting from insider information.
  • Ban Politicians from Insider Trading on Prediction Markets: Completely ban elected officials from prediction markets and prohibit public employees from using insider government knowledge to personally profit.
  • Stop the Revolving Door to Protect Ratepayers from Utility Regulators: Prohibit elected Wisconsin utility or energy companies from hiring elected or appointed officials who oversaw them for two years after leaving office.
  • Protect Public Records from Destruction: Make legislative documents and correspondence public records, ensuring records cannot be deleted before they are requested and closing the loophole that has been used to hide public records from the courts, journalists and the public.

What they’re saying:

Up North News: Crowley has a list to fight corruption, Tiffany has a list of votes enabling it

  • When Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley unveiled an anti-corruption reform package on Monday, his Republican opponent Tom Tiffany said he would want an even stronger plan. But Tiffany was an architect of the Republican-written law that made it harder to investigate corrupt politicians and said at the time, “I can tell you I want this to be my legacy.”
  • Crowley’s four-point anti-corruption plan starts with banning state politicians from engaging in any stock trading based on insider information they learn from their privileged position. It would require lawmakers’ investments be in diversified, mutual, or index funds or a blind trust, rather than being bought and sold as individual stocks.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: David Crowley proposes limits on elected officials’ stock trading

  • Democratic candidate for governor David Crowley unveiled a package of proposals aimed at combating corruption, including plans to create a firewall between elected officials and the stock market and improve access to lawmakers’ public records.
  • “They are there to use their offices to help people. That could be anything from helping get a pothole filled to securing legislation for a new health care facility,” Crowley said. “What it should not be is a vehicle to get rich by gaming the system. We see that running rampant in Washington right now, while Wisconsinites are facing higher costs on everything from gas to groceries to health care.”

Wisconsin State Journal: Governor candidate Crowley pitches anti-corruption policies

  • Crowley said he would bar state utilities and energy companies from hiring elected officials or members of the state Public Service Commission for two years after the individual leaves office.

Wisconsin Public Radio: David Crowley proposes plans to tackle government corruption

  • “Wisconsinites, the people who pay their public officials’ salaries, they deserve transparency. They deserve accountability for how their money is being spent,” he said. “They see politicians across the state and in Washington doing better than them. They’re doing fine, and in many cases, they’re thriving. And how can that be when diesel right here in the state of Wisconsin is nearly $6 a gallon?”
  • The proposals include banning elected state officials from participating in prediction markets. They’d also be banned from trading stocks, and would instead have to place investments in diversified funds or blind trusts.
  • And Crowley said he’d end a little-known caveat to Wisconsin’s open record laws. Whereas government agencies must retain records, individual lawmakers don’t have to. They can, for example, delete emails sent to their offices.

Wisconsin Examiner: Crowley proposes ban on stock trading, prediction market participation by public officials

  • “We have seen lawmakers try to hide how they spend taxpayer dollars on things that absolutely in no shape or form serve the public,” Crowley said.
  • Crowley said the proposals would help restore trust in the government.
  • “We need these laws on the books because the system as it is today does not work for working Wisconsin families,” Crowley said.