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"They date back to the dawn of Wisconsin government, but the future of the offices of state treasurer and secretary of state, may be in jeopardy.\"We're the only state that has this phobia about the secretary of state and the state treasurer,\" Wisconsin Secretary of State Douglas La Follette said.\"I think in the push for smaller government, we lost sight of efficient government,\" Wisconsin State Treasurer Kurt Schuller said.\"I just can't justify having those positions anymore,\" state Rep. Michael Schraa said.Schraa, of Oshkosh, is introducing bills that would change the state to do away with those two offices.\"Are we just going to keep that position as a symbolic position, so that we can say that we have a treasurer and a secretary of state when they have no responsibilities? I just don't think that's being prudent with taxpayer money,\" Schraa said.Each of the office holders earns an annual salary of more than $68,000.The treasurer's office has been trimmed to a four-person staff. The secretary of state's staff, which once was 50, is now five, and the offices have been stripped of almost all responsibility.The secretary of state no longer oversees corporations, or publishes bills, and the treasurer has lost control of the Unclaimed Property Program and was moved out of a large office off the Capitol grounds.Now the treasurer's office can be found in the basement of the state Capitol, but you won't be able to find it here because the floor is not open to the general public. And the elected office-holders now find themselves trying to justify the existence of their jobs.\"Is there sufficient work to keep this office in business?\" WISN 12 News reporter Kent Wainscott asked.\"Sure everybody here is very busy. We get lots of mail every day, and my staff works very hard,\" La Follette said.\"Your budget's been slashed. Your responsibilities have been cut. What's left?\" Wainscott asked.\"Well, we continue to promote the Unclaimed Property Program,\" Schuller said.And that puts Schuller in an interesting position.\"It is difficult, given the fact that I ran on trying to eliminate it,\" Schuller said.Elected in 2010 on an unusual pledge to do away with the Treasurer's Office, Schuller is now fighting to save it.\"We are wasting two accountable, elected, statewide officials with really very little to do, and they could be serving the public so much more,\" Schuller said.\"Those responsibilities have been stripped so, it really is accurate to say that they really don't do anything,\" University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Kenneth Mayer said.Mayer said in principle, having the responsibilities of those offices in the hands of elected officials rather than appointed department heads, makes sense.\"The original reason for having these substantive offices that were elected was to disperse power,\" Mayer said.But now he said the offices have virtually no power, and most voters aren't likely to see any value in them.\"Given the way that the offices are currently constructed, there isn't really a compelling reason to keep them around,\" Mayer said.But La Follette, who has held this job for more than three decades, said he'll keep pushing to restore power to this elected office.\"Why is it so important to you to hang onto this job and to continue to fight that fight?\" Wainscott asked.\"Because the fight should be fought,\" La Follette said.One of the few responsibilities left for those officerholders is that, the secretary of state and treasurer, along with attorney general, make up the board of public lands, which helps fund community projects across the state.Schraa's bill would replace those two members of the board with lieutenant governor and superintendent of public instruction.Schraa said he thinks he's worked around the constitutional obstacles. It would still have to pass two consecutive legislative sessions, and then voters would have the final say."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.wisn.com/article/state-representative-wants-to-get-rid-of-two-elected-offices/6319733>