It’s unclear what the audit will ultimately find, but Legislative Audit Bureau Director Joe Chrisman said a final report with recommendations could be completed sometime next year.
“Providing opportunities for all is important to the success of state government institutions, but to create more unaccountable bureaucracy in the name of DEI is a deal breaker,” committee co-chair Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Racine, said in a statement. “My hope is that the audit show us what’s happening in the DEI realm and at what cost to our taxpayers.”
After a deal was struck in December that made the DEI changes to UW system, Vos signaled the agreement was only the beginning and he planned to order “a very comprehensive in-depth audit of all the state agencies,” focused on DEI positions.
Vos said at the time the hope is that by early 2025 the Legislature will have a “roadmap to say, ‘OK, here are agencies that are doing it well, here are ones that are totally failing and need to be fixed, and here are ones that we can find maybe some kind of middle ground.”
Evers said in January he had no plans to change the state’s use of DEI positions.
“They can audit,” Ever said at the time. “That’s within their power. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to change anything.”