Republican drops legal threat after Secretary of State Doug La Follette mails out documents | Local Government
Helen Saulnier 
After receiving legal threats from a Republican lawmaker for his inaction, Democratic Secretary of State Doug La Follette has finished sending out documents to Congress and other states — as required by approved legislation — about holding a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to limit federal powers.
As a result, Sen. Kathleen Bernier, R-Chippewa Falls, dropped her threat to sue La Follette for not sending the documents, which her office had been asking him to send since February. She had threatened legal action if La Follette didn’t send them by Monday, though La Follette said he confirmed with a state Department of Justice attorney that there was no deadline to send the documents.
“He finally bought some envelopes,” Bernier said Sunday in a text message, attaching a laughing emoji.
The documents pertain to 2021 Assembly Joint Resolution 9, a measure to amend the U.S. Constitution to impose federal fiscal constraints, limit the federal government’s power and limit terms of office for members of Congress. The resolution held that the secretary of state must send an application to Congress and other state legislatures for a convention of states. Thirty-four state legislatures would need to approve the measure for Congress to call a convention, and it would take 38 states to ratify the proposed amendments in order to become part of the U.S. Constitution.
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La Follette’s office officially received the resolution in March, but he hadn’t sent out the documents because, he said, Republicans had stripped away his office’s resources to the point where it didn’t have enough money or staff to send them. Between February and June, Bernier’s office sent La Follette several reminders to send the documents. The situation culminated in Bernier’s threat in early July to bring legal action if he didn’t send them out by Monday.
La Follette then bought envelopes and mailed out the documents at an estimated cost of between $200 and $300, La Follette said Monday. He said he mailed out the last documents early last week.
Wisconsin’s longtime Secretary of State Doug La Follette will face Dane County Democratic Party chair Alexia Sabor in the Aug. 9 primary for the seat.
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“The cost is not the big deal,” La Follette said. “The big deal is just the practicality of doing it, given the budget issues and lack of adequate staff in the office to get our work done.”
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Bernier’s chief of staff, Michael Luckey, at one point offered to assist La Follette in mailing the letters, but La Follette didn’t take him up on the offer.
“That’s just a crazy thing,” La Follette said Monday. “I mean, agencies don’t normally swap resources back and forth to an agency.”
Agencies short on money can also request more from the Legislature’s budget committee. Saying the effort of going to the Joint Finance Committee for more money was a lengthy process and “pretty crazy business,” La Follette said the committee has for years rejected giving him more staff or money. He didn’t ask for more funding in this instance because, he said, the procedure exists for emergencies, and a DOJ attorney told him this situation wasn’t an emergency.
A DOJ attorney told La Follette that the joint resolution doesn’t specify a timeline for sending out the documents but advised the secretary of state to send them out in a reasonable amount of time, DOJ spokesperson Gillian Drummond said. Drummond added that the attorney said transmitting the documents electronically would have been sufficient.
La Follette called the situation “ridiculous” and said Bernier, who isn’t running for reelection, was making a political move.
“It isn’t like the people are waiting for (the documents) so they can do something,” La Follette said. “It is truly a symbolic issue for them to pass the resolution and for us to mail it. It has no impact. It doesn’t change anything.”
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