Schoemann spoke at the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting on Tuesday. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann stepped up to the front of a room in the back of Kavanaugh’s Esquire Club on the east side of Madison with a grin and quickly started a chant about Gov. Tony Evers.

“Tony’s got to go. Who’s with me?” Schoemann said about the current second-term Democratic governor. He encouraged others in the room to join him. “Tony’s gotta go… Tony’s gotta go. I’d like him to hear it if you don’t mind.”

The crowd of about 30 clapped enthusiastically and slowly started to pick up the chant.

Schoemann, who wore a red UW-Madison quarter zip up, jeans and a camo hat with his campaign logo across the front, was at the restaurant for the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting. It’s the one of the latest stops for Schoemann, who is the first candidate of either major party to launch his campaign in the 2026 governor’s race. 

Evers’ decision on whether he will seek a third term is still up in the air. He recently told WisEye that he is “not spending very much time at all thinking about whether I’m going to run or not.” 

Getting a head start

With about 14 months before a Republican primary might be held, Schoemann is working to get a head start on other potential candidates. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is mulling a run for the office, was critical of Evers as he addressed party members at the state GOP’s annual convention. Bill Berrien, a Whitefish Bay businessman and Navy SEAL veteran, recently formed a political action committee.

Schoemann said that it’s “entirely possible” for Wisconsin to be more competitive for Republicans. He launches his campaign as the Republican Party of Wisconsin is reevaluating how to win after their preferred candidate lost in the state Supreme Court race and as Democrats have won 12 of the last 15 statewide elections.

Schoemann sought to start his “Tony” chant a couple times as he spoke to the group — at one point telling attendees that he is the son of a Lutheran Minister and “can’t handle a congregation unless they join with me.” The crowd joined the chant more quickly this time, but Schoemann cut it off quickly as he pulled his camo hat off and placed it over his heart and encouraged attendees to stand up to sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with him.

Schoemann has worked in Washington County as the elected county executive for the last five years and as the county administrator for six years prior. He owns a farm in the town of Trenton, located between West Bend and Grafton, with his wife and is the father of two.

Schoemann told attendees that he joined the Army National Guard, attended UW-Whitewater and then served in Iraq in 2003. Throughout the event, Schoemann returned to his faith and military service, telling the crowd that “love your neighbor” has been central to his work and will be central to his campaign. 

“It’s changed the trajectory of my life permanently,” Schoemann said, describing a memory of his time in Iraq when he gave bottles of water to a child who was drinking from a puddle.

“As he approaches the puddle, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just going to jump around in the puddle and play.’ He kneels down, and starts cupping his hands and starts drinking out of that puddle,” Schoemann said. 

“When I came back home, that moment kept coming back to me over and over and over, and I dedicated the rest of my life to the service and sacrifice of the guys and gals who didn’t come home, either in whole or in part, and of my Lord, Jesus, by loving my neighbor,” he continued, “ and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we are going to win this election. We are going to turn Wisconsin red by loving our neighborhood.”

Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan

Schoemann said he grew up a “Rush Limbaugh” and “Ronald Reagan baby” — with beliefs in smaller government, lower taxes and strong defense — and that those ideas have shaped his service in local government.

Schoemann repeatedly criticized Evers and spoke about his record.

“Under the education governor, are your schools better than they were six years ago?” Schoemann asked, with answers of ‘no’ coming from some in the room. “He’s filling potholes right now — getting his picture taken in every community can get to… Are your roads really all that much better than they were six years ago? No, no. They’re not, and if you look across the state of Wisconsin on every issue issue after issue, things aren’t better.”

Evers has been traveling across the state last week helping fill potholes as a part of an annual effort to call attention to the issue of improving the roads and his recent budget proposal of to dedicate funds for that purpose —  though Republicans have removed that from the budget. At one stop on his trip, Evers told reporters that he didn’t know much about Schoemann but thinks he’s “gonna have to be another Donald Trump.” 

“That’s the only way Republicans can kind of move forward in this day and age,” Evers said, according to WSAW-TV 7.

Schoemann said that he decided to run because he is “sick and tired of our kids, leaving the state for other opportunities in different states and not coming back” and “sick and tired of our retirees leaving this state that has become a complete tax hell.”

Schoemann also compared himself to former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“Back when I was a kid in 1986, Tommy Thompson took out another Tony — [former Gov.] Tony Earl. A young, energetic Republican did very, very well in Dane County, and eventually by 1994, I believe he won Dane County,” said Schoemann, who is 43. 

Goal: Lose by less in Dane County

Thompson is the last Wisconsin governor to win a third term in office, and Schoemann wants to ensure that stays true by taking a page out of Thompson’s playbook. Schoemann said he would have three rules for his campaign: go to the Northwoods, go to Milwaukee and go to Dane County. He said that since his campaign launched he had visited Florence County to talk with a group of people, who, he said, likely “hadn’t seen a statewide elected official in decades,” had been on the radio in Milwaukee and his Tuesday evening stop in Madison was his second already. 

Schoemann said Republicans need to lose by less in Dane County, pointing out that President Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin with nearly 23% of the vote in the deep blue county. 

“We’ve got to be pushing back towards 26, 27, 28[%], and we’re only going to do it by having conversations with our neighbors and physically being present,” Schoemann said. “I can tell you you’re going to get sick of seeing me because I will be back again and again and again. I want to hear from you what this state needs to be. I want to hear from you what direction the state needs to go.”

Schoemann then took questions from the audience.

One attendee asked about what he would do about property taxes. Local communities across the state have been strapped for funds in recent years due to restrictions in the ways that they can raise revenue with many turning to raising property taxes through referendums to help afford services.

“How many of you live in the city of Madison? How are you liking that new referendum for the school district and the city — one-two punch?” Schoemann replied. He added that property tax rates in Washington Co. are low because of decisions he’s made. He said that at times when they have “considered alternatives where we needed additional resources, we go to the people and ask.” 

The county went  to referendum in 2024 to help prevent cuts to its public safety services. While the referendum failed, a deal on shared revenue and a local sales tax for Milwaukee that  lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers made helped the county avoid the cuts. 

That deal led to a back and forth over social media between Schoemann and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson after Schoemann took a jab at the city because of the tax. Milwaukee leaders were prominent advocates in helping secure the state funding, which has helped communities across the state, including Washington County.

Banning ‘Democracy in the Park,’ encouraging early voting

In response to a question about elections, Schoemann said that he believes in purging voter rolls, banning voting events including ‘Democracy in the Park” — a COVID-era effort held by the city of Madison where poll workers picked up absentee ballots from voters who dropped them off  — and having “significant election integrity” measures. He also talked about promoting early voting in more rural areas. 

“The clerks are part time, most of them work out of their houses. They don’t have an office at the town hall… In those places. If you want to have in-person absentee voting, you have to schedule an appointment at the home of the clerk. In Madison and in Milwaukee… the convenience level is through the roof right now,” Schoemann said. “It’s not quite seven days a week, 24 hours a day for those 13 days, but it isn’t far either, especially as compared to those towns.” 

Schoemann said his county sought to incentivize local municipal workers to add in-person absentee voting days and times by paying them 150% of the cost. He said the state needs to “completely transform how we think about elections in Wisconsin.” 

Schoemann segued to criticizing Evers for his relationship with lawmakers and the number of bills he has vetoed, saying changes in law need to come as the result of the governor working as a “coequal” branch with the Legislature. He said that the governor should work with bills before outright vetoing them.

“The fact that this governor doesn’t have the leadership capability to walk down the hallway and talk to legislative leaders is an embarrassment to our state,” Schoemann said, referring to communication difficulties between lawmakers and Evers, who are currently negotiating the next state budget.

Schoemann said that he wouldn’t want to “throw money” to help address education problems, though he thinks the system currently in place is outdated. He also said that he would seek to help change the veto power that governors have. 

This will be the first time Schoemann runs in a statewide election. He promised the room that no one would “outwork” him. 

“There might be more money. There might be worse press, there might be all kinds of things, but no one will outwork me,” Schoemann said.

In the weeks before deciding to run, Schoemann told the room that he asked his wife if she was sure she wanted him to run. 

“You know what she said to me?” Schoemann asked. “‘Well, can’t be worse than Iraq.’”

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Participants in Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council's Fresh Start program build a house, learning construction skills in the process. Program participants enroll in AmeriCorps and are paid an hourly wage for their work. (Photo courtesy of Western Dairyland EOC Inc.)

A coalition of 25 states, including Wisconsin, sued the Trump administration Tuesday to block the cancellation of AmeriCorps programs across the country.

The cancellation has upended plans at more than two dozen organizations in Wisconsin that have engaged AmeriCorps members in community service work, and stranded scores of participants in the midst of one-year stints in the program.

“I was completely blindsided,” Parker Kuehni told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday. The University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with a degree in global health was in his second year with AmeriCorps, working at a Madison free health clinic and preparing to start medical school in June when he learned Monday morning that the program was canceled.

Created by Congress in 1993 as the Corporation for National and Community Service, its official name, AmeriCorps has deployed community service workers across the country in the decades since. AmeriCorps members are usually recent college graduates who join the program for a year or two. They teach in schools, assist with disaster relief and take on a host of other roles. 

Wisconsin has 25 AmeriCorps programs that operate at more than 300 locations across the state, according to the office of Gov. Tony Evers. In Wisconsin, AmeriCorps operates through Serve Wisconsin, which administers its Wisconsin contracts and is housed in the Department of Administration.

On April 16, AmeriCorps placed about 75% of its employees on administrative leave with pay, the New York Times reported.

At 6:20 p.m. on Friday, April 25, Jeanne Duffy, the Serve Wisconsin executive director, received an email message that AmeriCorps grants and their recipients in Wisconsin were being terminated immediately “because it has been determined that the award no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

The form letter instructed recipients to notify all organizations and agencies with AmeriCorps-related projects. “You must immediately cease all award activities. This is a final agency action and is not administratively appealable,” the message said.

Lawsuit: Cancellation ‘usurps Congress’s power of the purse’

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland charges the Trump administration’s cancellation of the program “flouts Congress’s creation of AmeriCorps and assignment of agency duties; usurps Congress’s power of the purse and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers; and arbitrarily and capriciously — without any reasoned analysis — vitiates the agency’s ability to function consistent with its statutory mission and purpose.”

The suit charges that the program’s abrupt end also violates federal law, which states AmeriCorps can make “significant changes to program requirements, service delivery or policy only through public notice and comment rulemaking.”

“The attempt to dismantle AmeriCorps is part of a pattern from the Trump administration of disrespect toward those who serve others,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “That approach is not just shameful — it’s misguided. AmeriCorps volunteers and projects help strengthen communities. AmeriCorps should be thanked for its work, not abruptly dismantled.”

Evers’ office telegraphed Wisconsin’s plan to join the lawsuit late Tuesday morning.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is trying to cut federal funding that Congress already approved and Wisconsin is counting on to help kids, families, and communities across our state — all so they can pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Evers said in a statement. “These latest reckless Trump and Musk cuts will hurt Wisconsin’s kids who are homeless or who need tutors for math and reading, folks who are working to overcome addiction and substance use, stop work on conservation projects, as well as all of the dedicated public servants whose livelihoods are depending on this work.”

Tutoring programs, health care clinics

AmeriCorps’ cancellation affected organizations and agencies all across the state.

In Madison, the United Way of Dane County enlisted 27 AmeriCorps members in two tutoring programs — one in math for high school students and the other in reading and literacy for elementary school children.

AmeriCorps members were placed in schools to help identify students who would benefit from tutoring, United Way officials said. They also screened and conducted background checks for more than 175 community volunteer tutors as well as serving as tutors themselves. More than 1,000 children have received tutoring in the two programs this year.

“And these kids are able to accelerate their academic success, which puts them on track for [higher] graduation rates,” said United Way CEO Renee Moe. “So, this is a really huge loss for us.”

AmeriCorps members were “really key to having successful volunteers support students in literacy,” said Emily Greene, director of Schools of Hope, the elementary program.

In the high school program, Achievement Connections, members have supported and trained other high school students as peer tutors. That helps those students “be engaged in their school in a way that they otherwise wouldn’t be and also gain some skills,” said Karl Johnson, director of Achievement Connections.

“We find that those relationships . . . are some of our strongest when it’s students helping each other out, and our [AmeriCorps] members are a pretty key part of facilitating that,” Johnson said.

The Wisconsin Association of Free and Charitable Clinics has deployed 30 AmeriCorps members throughout Wisconsin this year.

Some assist clinics, local health departments or the state Department of Health Services in administrative tasks, writing grants, collecting and analyzing data and related work, said Domonique Coffee, the association’s AmeriCorps program manager. Others staff clinics in a public health role, taking a patient’s blood pressure or other vital signs, teaching patients about managing their diabetes or hypertension or providing other direct care, she said.

The program allowed “free and charitable clinics to increase their services and capacity for services . . . to those who are underinsured or uninsured,” Coffee said.

It has also helped prepare the AmeriCorps members as future health care providers — “the future physicians and public health leaders of our next generation,” she added.

Fostering skills for careers and life

Parker Kuehni had graduated with a degree in global public health two years ago and was preparing to go to medical school. But he knew he first wanted to get more experience in directly working with patients.

He volunteered as a barbershop health screener for the Perry Family Free Clinic, which serves uninsured, low-income Madison residents. Through the clinic he connected with AmeriCorps and then shifted to helping with patient coordination, communication and scheduling, discussing care plans with patients and managing referrals to specialists.

The experience “built my empathy for people,” he said. The experiences he had “will contribute to me being an overall better future physician.”

While the typical AmeriCorps participant is a college graduate, the Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council in Eau Claire took a different approach with the program.

Since the late 1990s Western Dairyland has operated Fresh Start, an education, skills and career program for young adults ages 18 to 25. Participants often have a sparse job history and might not have completed high school.

The program engages up to 15 participants in a year-long house-building project. “We provide them with life skills and job skills and technical education, allowing them to then leave the program and either go on to school or attain full-time employment,” said Dale Karls, Western Dairyland’s communications coordinator.

The participants themselves become AmeriCorps members and earn an hourly wage on the job. Some 600 young people have gone through the program over the last three decades, building 45 homes, Karls said.

All the organizations the Wisconsin Examiner contacted Tuesday said the news of AmeriCorps’ cancellation came too recently  for them to know what they will do if the program isn’t restored.

Coffee said the Wisconsin Free and Charitable Clinics Association is trying to support its AmeriCorps members, “helping them find their footing.”

At United Way of Dane County, “We’ve spoken to our school district partners,” said Moe, the agency’s CEO. “We have reaffirmed with them that tutoring continues to be an important strategy to help with academic success. And so right now we’re trying to be creative around how to best keep really effective tutoring programs going.”

“We’re hoping that the funding will be reinstated,” said Karls of Western Dairyland. In the meantime, he added, “We have a half-constructed house in Strum, Wisconsin. We have to find a way to finish that.”

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• Led by Dane County, the state’s most-used criminal charge — bail jumping — is becoming far more common, even as crime falls.

• Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court.

• Some prosecutors say defendants are to blame for the spike, while other attorneys say prosecutors are using the charge to pad the case numbers or as leverage to secure guilty pleas. 

• Most states issue criminal charges only for a narrower set of violations, resulting in exponentially fewer charges.

Following a decades-long explosion of Wisconsin prosecutors charging people for violating court-ordered rules, defense attorneys and civil rights advocates are raising alarm and calling for new limits on the practice. 

Wisconsin is one of seven states that allow prosecutors to file additional charges if people violate a wide range of pretrial release conditions while a case is pending in court. These rules can include avoiding certain places, abstaining from alcohol, taking drug tests or obeying a curfew. 

Neighboring Minnesota is among the majority of states that issue criminal charges only for a narrower set of violations, resulting in exponentially fewer charges. But in Wisconsin, the number of charges filed by prosecutors has grown dramatically over the past two decades and has accelerated further in recent years — even as crime rates fell. 

Prosecutors filed more than four times as many of these charges in 2024 as they did in 2000, making these violations by far the most common criminal charge in Wisconsin’s courts. The charges appeared in one of every four felony cases opened last year, and one in every seven misdemeanor cases, according to court system reports. 

Some prosecutors say defendants are to blame for the spike, while other attorneys say prosecutors are using the charge to pad the case numbers. In funding requests to state lawmakers, prosecutors have long cited growing caseloads — driven in part by violations of release conditions — to justify needing more resources. 

Defense attorneys and civil rights advocates say prosecutors are also exploiting Wisconsin’s laws to amp up pressure on people to plead guilty. Under state law, a single violation of release conditions can lead to multiple new charges being filed if the person has multiple cases pending. 

Wisconsin’s public defender’s office has struggled for decades to recruit enough staff and private attorneys to take all of its cases. The office argues the growing number of charges related to court-order release conditions is now further exacerbating that challenge. 

Deputy State Public Defender Katie York said her office has seen individual cases with dozens of counts — sometimes 70 or more — creating complexity that discourages private attorneys from accepting indigent clients’ cases, which could lighten the load for public defenders.  

Michael Rempel, who studies the effectiveness of criminal justice strategies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, was stunned to learn from the Cap Times that violating release conditions was the most common charge in Wisconsin. Most states allow these charges only in more limited circumstances. 

“I’m shocked,” Rempel said. “It sounds like it would be worth evaluating this practice, and my hypothesis would be that it might have some unintended negative consequences.” 

Criminal justice research supports the practice of imposing “intermediate sanctions” on people who violate release conditions, but those sanctions need not be severe, Rempel said. In fact, “overly onerous supervision” can be counterproductive — exposing people to more charges and making them more likely to be charged with a crime again in the future, he said. 

In Dane County, prosecutors filed more than twice as many of the charges in 2024 as in 2018. Ismael Ozanne, the county’s district attorney, has defended his office’s increasing use of the charges as an important tool to help keep the community safe. Last year, the county’s prosecutors filed more felony-level charges over release conditions than prosecutors in any other Wisconsin county. That includes Milwaukee County, where the population is about 60% larger.  

“The real question is, why are people violating their conditions of bail?” Ozanne said. “If someone is violating their bail — basically disregarding the order of the court — how would the community want us to address that?” 

Still, Ozanne said he’s open to considering changes. He said Dane County is already evaluating other law enforcement practices through a Community Justice Council, which includes a committee examining pretrial release. 

“This topic does come up every so often, and it’s something that we should actually look at,” Ozanne said. 

“Are there conditions or things that we can do in the community that may help an individual not violate their bail conditions?” Ozanne added. “But I don’t think we’re in a position to say that they can have no bail conditions.” 

‘Racking up felony counts’ 

In Wisconsin courtrooms, the charge for violating court-ordered release conditions is called “bail jumping.” Though the term may call to mind images of criminals skipping town to evade justice, state law uses a far broader meaning. 

In most other states, bail jumping applies only to people missing their court dates. In some states, the law is even narrower, limiting the charge to people who intentionally skip court dates or don’t return to court within a set amount of time. 

On the books since 1969, Wisconsin’s law says prosecutors may charge people with felony-level bail jumping for violating release conditions that stemmed from another felony-level charge. They may file misdemeanor-level bail jumping charges for violations related to a misdemeanor case. 

From 2020 to 2024, Wisconsin prosecutors filed nearly 250,000 bail jumping charges, according to state court system figures. During the same period, Minnesota’s court system reported prosecutors filing 336 charges for failure to appear and 636 charges for willfully disobeying a court mandate, the only potential charges for violating bail conditions in that state. 

York, the Wisconsin public defender, said some of her office’s clients have dozens of pending bail jumping charges. Those charges don’t necessarily send people back to jail or in front of a judge, though. 

“You’re not so dangerous that your bail needs to be revoked, but yet you keep on racking up felony counts for either non-criminal behavior or low-level (criminal) behavior,” York said.  

In 1998 and 2008, Wisconsin courts twice confirmed that prosecutors may file multiple bail jumping charges for violating the conditions of a single bond — if the defendant violated multiple conditions or had multiple pending cases. Since those rulings, bail jumping charges have proliferated in the state. 

In the last three years, Wisconsin prosecutors have filed an average of nearly 50,000 charges a year for misdemeanor or felony bail jumping. That’s about twice the rate of another commonly charged crime in the state: disorderly conduct. 

Three years ago, the nonprofit Wisconsin Justice Initiative found that in most of the counties it studied, more than a third of felony cases included at least one bail jumping charge. 

‘Weaponizing our statutes’ 

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director at the ACLU of Wisconsin, said some court-ordered release conditions are worth enforcing but only in limited situations, like when the conditions aim to protect a victim. 

“There is a clear, good public policy reason why that could be a condition of bail,” Merkwae said. “I just wish that … as prosecutors wield the enormous power that they have in making charging decisions under our existing statutes, that those narrowly tailored decisions could be made instead of just weaponizing our statutes into forcing folks to plead to underlying charges they otherwise wouldn’t.” 

Defense attorneys say bail jumping charges give prosecutors more leverage to pressure a defendant to plead guilty since the new charges can come with more jail or prison time than the original charges. Under state law, each felony bail jumping conviction may result in up to six years in prison. 

“We’ve seen cases where a person goes to trial on the underlying case and gets a not guilty (verdict), but they still are saddled with a felony because of the felony bail jumping,” York said. “That feels inherently unfair, especially when you’re talking about a felony. Now you can’t possess a firearm. Now you have all of the other restrictions that come along with being a felon.” 

Bail jumping charges can be easier to prove than underlying charges, depending on the evidence or witnesses needed in the original case. Presented with all their charges, some defendants plead guilty to an underlying charge in exchange for prosecutors dismissing some or all of the bail jumping charges, Ozanne said. In Dane County, more than eight in every 10 bail jumping charges are dismissed. 

While about 96% of Dane County criminal cases are resolved by plea deals, Ozanne disputes that bail jumping charges are driving those pleas. 

“I think there is, frankly, a high frequency of people accepting responsibility and looking to get on with their lives and hopefully, at some level, looking to repair harm,” he said. 

Wisconsin State Public Defender Jennifer Bias disagrees with that view, calling the growth of bail jumping charges “great overreach” by prosecutors. 

“They do dismiss an inordinate number of them, but I feel like that’s because they’re charging an inordinate number,” Bias said. “How much work would we take out of the system if we could find a different way to deal with that alleged behavior?” 

‘I have not trumped out more bail jumping’ 

Ozanne disputes that prosecutors are filing more bail jumping charges in an effort to inflate their case counts when requesting funding, a concern raised by the state Legislature’s nonpartisan auditing agency. 

“I’ve been indicating that we are understaffed since I took office in 2010. I have not trumped out more bail jumping as an indication … that we need more prosecutors,” Ozanne said. “We don’t have the time to generate more cases just to show that we have a need for bodies.” 

Ozanne said a more likely reason for the spike in bail jumping charges is the COVID-19 pandemic, which shuttered the county’s courthouse for more than a year and delayed many trials. At the height of the backlog, the average time to resolve a felony case grew to 11 months, nearly twice the average before the pandemic. 

Craig Johnson, board president of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative and longtime Wisconsin defense attorney, said Ozanne’s explanation is plausible, though it’s hard to know without examining individual cases.  

“It’s somewhat common sense that if a person is out on bail for two years, and it takes that long to get their case resolved, there’s a higher possibility that they will violate a condition of release here or there than if their case is resolved in a shorter period of time,” Johnson said.  

Still, he said, the reason could be that prosecutors discovered “a very potent tool.” 

“It’s sometimes too good for them to pass up,” Johnson said. “For a prosecutor, it’s a way to make sure that they’re going to bring that case to a close and not have to get contested at a jury trial.” 

Bias doesn’t buy Ozanne’s pandemic explanation. She questioned why the number of bail jumping charges would remain at elevated levels in 2023 and 2024 after the court cleared its backlog of cases. 

“If that’s true, we would absolutely see the trends going back down,” Bias said. 

‘Maybe this isn’t working’ 

Vernell Cauley and Tyrees Scott have each been charged with multiple bail jumping charges in Dane County. They now work in jobs supporting other formerly incarcerated people and view the surge in charges over release conditions as exploitative. 

Cauley is a peer support specialist with EXPO Wisconsin, an advocacy group made up of formerly incarcerated people. Cauley said many people sign release agreements without realizing how many rules they must follow. Cauley said the additional charges were enough in some of his cases to convince him to plead guilty. 

“The stack of charges creates the sense of more fear, more thoughts of not being able to get out of the situation,” Cauley said. “It’s a way to keep people oppressed.” 

Scott, a peer support specialist with Madison nonprofit Just Dane, said Dane County prosecutors are “notorious” for filing bail jumping cases to pressure defendants. 

“When they get to adding up all that time, you get a little nervous and scared so then you’ll take whatever they give you,” Scott said. 

For a 2020 report on the rise in bail jumping charges, the Cap Times spoke to a Madison man who, as a teen, racked up around nine bail jumping charges for missing court-ordered appointments or getting caught with drugs. He said he didn’t have a car to get from Stoughton to his appointments, and he wasn’t offered drug treatment until he was later transferred to drug court. 

Sometimes the new charges would send him back to jail. Nearly everyone he met in jail had been charged with bail jumping too, he said. 

It’s a familiar scenario to York, the deputy state public defender. She said the reason many people violate conditions of their release is because they’re poor, dealing with addiction or don’t have adequate transportation. 

“A lot of the bail jumping (charges) stem not from this intentional thwarting of the rules, but from the realities of the place in the world that our clients live in,” York said. “We’re filling up jails and prisons and putting in more roadblocks for our clients to get into a successful place.” 

Bail jumping has twice drawn attention from state lawmakers in recent years but led to no changes in state law either time. 

In 2019, a bipartisan group of legislators proposed eliminating felony-level bail jumping and reducing the maximum penalty for a misdemeanor bail jumping conviction. The bill would also have limited the charge to intentionally missing a court date, or violating an order to avoid a certain place or person. 

Four years later, Republican lawmakers called for setting a minimum bail amount of $5,000 for people previously convicted of bail jumping. That legislation followed a high-profile attack in Waukesha. A man who had been previously charged with bail jumping plowed his SUV into the city’s Christmas parade, killing six. 

Neither the bipartisan bill nor the Republican legislation gained enough support to pass the Legislature. In the coming months, the Legislature will be back in Madison debating the state’s next two-year budget, including how much funding to allocate for prosecutors and public defenders. 

York said she’s holding out hope that state lawmakers could one day narrow the scope of bail jumping to reduce how often it’s filed or reduce the severity of charges. 

“It’s probably costing taxpayers a lot of money to do all of these additional prosecutions,” York said. “So I’m hopeful that people will realize maybe this isn’t working and we need to rethink it.” 

The Cap Times produced this report in collaboration with Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.

Crackdown on Wisconsin court order violations stuns lawyers, analysts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.