LA CROSSE, WI (Wisconsin Radio Network) — Questions are being asked about a cruise that Governor Scott Walker may be taking this summer. Walker and his wife Tonette have been invited to participate in a week-long evangelical Christian cruise to Alaska in mid-August.
“They’ve asked us, we said we’re willing to do it,” Walker said in La Crosse on Tuesday. “We still have it in front of the state Ethics Commission, so they have to sign off on it first. We’re not official until they say it’s okay.”
Jay Heck with the watchdog group Common Cause doesn’t think state ethics rules should allow the Walkers to accept the cruise. “Under Wisconsin law, state officials are not permitted to accept ‘anything of value.’ That means that a citizen cannot take a legislator or a state official like a governor out to lunch and pay for it, unless the person that they’re taking out is giving a speech,” Heck said.
While the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Walker will be giving a speech during the August 12-19 cruise, Heck thinks the Ethics Board should rule against Walker being able to accept the free cruise. The Walkers, he said, should do what the rest of the cruise going public does: “open up their own checkbooks, or utilize their own credit card, and pay for the trip themselves.”
