None of the 24 state agencies the Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed kept track of what they spent on diversity, equity and inclusion.

That’s the central finding of Report 25-05, released April 11. The nonpartisan bureau looked at what executive branch agencies did to comply with Executive Order 59, which Gov. Tony Evers signed in November 2019. The University of Wisconsin System got its own audit.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee asked for the review in April 2024.

The money

Because no agency tracked DEI spending, auditors pieced together estimates from payroll records, calendar invites and other documents. They found:

  • Twelve agencies spent about $2.2 million in 2023-24 on salaries for 47 positions with DEI duties.
  • Twenty-three agencies spent about $705,300 in salary costs for employees’ time in DEI training in 2023.
  • Eight agencies spent about $444,300 to complete actions listed in their equity and inclusion plans in 2023-24.
  • Twenty-three agencies spent about $200,200 in salary costs for 4,990 hours of staff time in DEI committee meetings in 2023-24.

The bureau warned that some of the costs overlap, so the figures can’t be added together.

The results

Executive Order 59 requires agencies to write equity and inclusion action plans. The Department of Administration required plans from 21 of the 24 agencies. Their multiyear plans listed 1,212 actions.

Nineteen agencies finished 81 of the 192 actions they expected to complete in 2023-24, or 42.2%. Four finished everything they planned: the Educational Communications Board, the Wisconsin Technical College System Board and the departments of Financial Institutions and Workforce Development.

The departments of Justice and Public Instruction finished none.

DPI still led every agency in committee costs. Its staff time in DEI committee meetings cost an estimated $59,400 in 2023-24. DPI had four such committees: an Equity and Inclusion Plan Workgroup that met 34 times, an Equity and Inclusion Leadership Committee that met 29 times, a Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee that met 11 times and an oversight task force that met four times.

Where auditors could measure outcomes, the picture was mixed. Fifteen agencies hit their goals on 26 of 53 completed actions.

Open meetings

The committees are subject to the open meetings law. Six agencies didn’t give public notice of committee meetings in 2023-24. Three didn’t keep minutes for most meetings, and two of those kept no minutes at all.

DOA’s own 2022 review found five agencies out of compliance. It required two of them to fix the problem and let the other three go.

Recommendations

The bureau told DOA to improve how it approves the plans and monitors agencies, and to make agencies document that they fixed problems.

DOA Secretary Kathy Blumenfeld wrote that the department “generally accepts” the recommendations. She also disputed some of the bureau’s cost methods and said many of the activities predate Evers’ order and are required by state law.

The reaction

The audit committee’s Republican co-chairs, Sen. Eric Wimberger of Oconto and Rep. Robert Wittke of Caledonia, pounced.

“This report shows that taxpayers spent millions of dollars on DEI with very little to show for it,” Wimberger said. “Thanks to these findings, we can now more clearly identify wasteful and abusive spending by our agencies, and end it for good.”

“Taxpayers are spending vast amounts of money on programs that barely get started or are rarely completed,” Wittke said. “The ‘action steps’ by agencies brought forward in this report are incomplete, and no one at the top seems to mind at all.”

DOA owes the committee its progress report by June 13.