Voters by a wide margin keep Wisconsin's 170-year-old state treasurer's office

[RandySF]

It turns out Wisconsinites want to have a state treasurer, after all.

By a strong margin, voters Tuesday beat back a constitutional amendment and kept Wisconsin's 170-year-old treasurer's office.

"I'm flabbergasted that the results are as high as they are," said former GOP Treasurer Jack Voight, who led a coalition to keep the office. "I thought it would be a much closer vote than this."

With little spending on either side of the referendum and no known polling, it wasn't clear until Tuesday which side would prevail in the contest that culminated a years-long effort to abolish the office. Some voters may have been surprised just to find the question on their ballots.

"No governor, no politician or political party should be above our state constitution," Voight said.

The current treasurer, Republican Matt Adamczyk, led the charge to get rid of the office.

"The point of the constitutional amendment is to let the people decide," he said. "We seemingly will have a state treasurer and it will be up to future legislatures to decide what the state treasurer will do."


By keeping the office, voters gave candidates the opportunity to campaign for the position in the fall, though so far only one person has declared a run.



https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/03/wisconsin-voters-decide-whether-keep-nix-170-year-old-state-treasurers-office-voters-nix-wisconsins/477700002/

[ginnyinWI]

1. I saw it for the blatant power grab that it was.

They said that most of the functions of the office are being done by other departments now. okay. But this is in the state Constitution. It can't be good to remove another check on the power of the governor, whether they are Republican or Democrat.