Ed Wall And The Legend of Lincoln Hills Continues

Ed. Note: The original post has been edited a tiny bit to correct the name of the juvenile correctional facilty in question.Ed Wall, the recently resigned Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections still thinks that the state owes him something despite the scandal at Lincoln Hills, the correctional facility for male juvenile offenders. It still hasn’t dawned on him that he is the road kill under the wheels of Governor Walker’s out of control bus. It is appalling that he still has a state job but under the law and the innocent until proven guilty tenet, he has a job. One that he is drawing $108,000 a year for while on administrative leave. Attorney General Brad Schimel has been very fair and very transparent on his handling of Mr. Hall’s employment.

But there are a couple of issues in the latest discoveries around Mr. Wall’s woes. As we’ve known for sometime, the governor’s office has informal directives to staff and managers to avoid creating permanent public records that might need to be disclosed under open record requests. Mr. Wall apparently tried to do an end run on that by writing a snail mail letter and sending it directly to the home of the governor’s aide and then asking him to shred it when he’d read it. Mr. Wall must be using his new found free time to reread the original Bond novels…

But the letter was properly preserved and provided to the media per an open records request.

But here’s something else that I find troubling on at least two levels:

Bach (Wall’s attorney, Dan Bach) said Wall’s appeal hasn’t yet been filed with the WERC. In the appeal draft, Wall argues that he contacted law enforcement about the prison abuse allegations after learning of them in January 2015 and that they occurred “nine levels of supervision below his office.”

First of course, he is the guy in charge. Anything that happens on his watch is his responsibility. If he had cleaned house right away he might not be in this fix.

But second, there are NINE layers of supervision in DOC between the secretary and the staff at Lincoln Hills? Where the flock is the smaller government that the GOP keeps ranting about? Of course the number nine might be hyperbole…but if it anywhere near accurate…it seems excessive to me…and no wonder the bottom rung feels sheltered and free to do as they please…the management layers are too thick to ever notice.

There’s another layer of management that needs to be held accountable…but that’s another post!