Dr. David W. Jones and Gordon Hintz: BUSTED

Gordon Hintz, DEMOCRAT Wisconsin assemblyman, appears to have a campaign treasurer in violation of ethics laws.

Brian Sikma, Media Trackers, reports that Dr. David W. Jones, the campaign treasurer of Hintz and chair of the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh's Department of Criminal Justice, has used his taxpayer-funded email account for political activity.

Sikma writes:

The man who serves as the campaign treasurer for state Rep. Gordon Hintz, an Oshkosh Democrat, appears to have violated an important ethics law. When government employees in Milwaukee County did something similar to what he’s done, they faced the threat of prosecution and one official was found guilty of a felony misconduct in public office.

Dr. David W. Jones is the chair of the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh’s Department of Criminal Justice. He is also treasurer of the Hintz for Assembly committee, and on official campaign finance reports going back as far as 2008 he lists his contact e-mail address as “jonesd@uwosh.edu.”

According to e-mails turned up by an extensive open records request filed by Media Trackers, Jones frequently uses his UW-Oshkosh e-mail account to keep track of campaign finance business. Because UW-Oshkosh is a publicly funded university backed by state government, Jones is a public employee and his e-mail address is a government resource.

See the damning emails here.

It's clear that Jones used a government email account for political work.

That's not OK.

When individuals working for Republican candidates engaged in similar activity, they were charged and suffered as a result of their transgressions.

So what's going to happen to Jones?

Will the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other local media splash the story, or will it be ignored for as along as possible?

(Rhetorical question, of course.)


Thank you, Media Trackers, for exposing the truth, something that's left to the New Media to do.