Audit: State agencies, UW System spent millions on DEI

The co-chairmen of the state legislature’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee, state Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia), have scheduled a public hearing after the release of two audit reports on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in state government agencies and in the UW System showing millions of dollars spent and thousands of hours of time invested in the programs.

“These new reports show millions of dollars spent to propagate hateful rhetoric to divide Wisconsinites in our halls of government and universities,” the lawmakers said in a statement. “The agencies and colleges pushing these DEI initiatives need to be held accountable. We look forward to shining a light on these wasteful practices at next week’s hearing.”

The audit committee approved the audits in May 2024. The reports were released on April 11.

Among the findings, the audit showed that 12 agencies spent an estimated $2.2 million on salary costs for 47 positions with job duties pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion in fiscal year 2023-24 alone, while that year UW institutions spent $40.2 million on offices with job duties pertaining to DEI.

“The new audit shows us the extent to which DEI grifters profiteer off Wisconsin taxpayers,” Wimberger said when the report was released. “Wisconsin should not tolerate, much less propagate, race-based discrimination masquerading as equality in its halls of government. This report shows that taxpayers spent millions of dollars on DEI with very little to show for it. Thanks to these findings, we can now more clearly identify wasteful and abusive spending by our agencies, and end it for good.”

Among other things, Wimberger asserted, with an executive order directing the DEI initiatives, Gov. Tony Evers abandoned a Martin Luther King Jr.-inspired pursuit of a colorblind society and replaced it with DEI plans requiring a hyper-focus on immutable characteristics. 

“Executive Order 59 takes away individuality and imposes scorekeeping among groups Wisconsinites didn’t choose to join,” he said. “Positioning bureaucrats as arbiters among imposed intersectional group interests is wrong, ineffective, and shockingly wasteful, allowing grifters to sell propaganda at a high price.”

Wittke said the audits revealed repeated and ongoing neglect by the Department of Administration to write, review, and monitor basic requirements of workforce assignments.

“It is striking to me that with each audit report we see the same recommendations come forth: ‘improve process for…; approve plans…; annually review training data; follow up with staff who have not completed…; require all agencies to submit documentation,’” Wittke said. “Taxpayers are spending vast amounts of money on programs that barely get started or are rarely completed. The ‘action steps’ by agencies brought forward in this report are incomplete, and no one at the top seems to mind at all.”

Wittke said the lawmakers would continue to dig into the findings and look to hold agencies and the UW System accountable to resolve the issues that continue to appear in the audit findings.

The audits

The audits analyzed “diversity” initiatives in 24 state government agencies in compliance with Evers’s executive order, as well as 14 institutions across the University of Wisconsin System.

The auditors said they reviewed equity and inclusion action plans for 21 agencies that completed them from January 2020 through April 2024. 

“We found that the 21 agencies each completed two multiyear plans that listed a total of 1,212 actions the agencies planned to take pertaining to staff recruitment, staff retention, and agency culture,” the audit reports stated. 

The DOA did not require three agencies to complete the plans — the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, the Department of Tourism, or the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. 

None of the agencies tracked the amounts they spent specifically on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the auditors observed.

“We used the available information to estimate four types of costs that agencies incurred,” the report stated. “Because some amounts overlap multiple types of costs, the amounts we estimated cannot be summed. We found that 12 agencies spent an estimated $2.2 million on salary costs for 47 positions with job duties pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion in FY 2023-24; 23 agencies spent an estimated $705,300 in salary costs for time spent attending diversity, equity, and inclusion training required by executive order 59 or DOA in 2023; eight agencies in 2023-24 spent an estimated $444,300 to complete certain actions that were listed in their equity and inclusion action plans and that they had expected to complete in that fiscal year; and 23 agencies spent an estimated $200,200 in salary costs for time spent attending meetings of diversity, equity, and inclusion committees in FY 2023-24.”

From 2021 through 2023, 82.9 percent of newly hired staff at 23 agencies completed the equity and inclusion training required by the executive order, the auditors observed.

“Over this three-year period, 85.3 percent of staff at 23 agencies completed the annual respectful workplace training required by DOA,” the report stated. “From 2020 through 2023, eight of 12 cabinet agency secretaries whose agencies we included in our audit annually attended a professional development training or conference relating to diversity, equity, or inclusion, which Executive Order 59 required them to attend.”

An equity and inclusion officer helps to develop, coordinate, and implement an agency’s equity and inclusion action plan, the auditors explained: “In 2023, documentation indicated 5 of 11 equity and inclusion officers completed equity and inclusion training required by DOA.”

DEI at the UW

According to the auditors, UW institutions planned diversity, equity, and inclusion activities based primarily on decisions made at the UW institution level. 

“Because UW institutions did not share a common definition of diversity, equity, and inclusion, we identified relevant activities based on how each UW institution implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion,” the report stated. “Information obtained from UW institutions listed a total of 1,263 diversity, equity, and inclusion activities for the period from January 2020 through April 2024.”

That information listed various types of activities, such as connecting faculty to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, as well as eliminating policies and practices that negatively affect the enrollment of underrepresented students.

“A total of 403 of the 1,263 activities (31.9 percent) focused on students, and 336 activities (26.6 percent) focused on faculty and staff,” the report stated. “The remaining activities focused on either members of community organizations and the public or multiple types of individuals.”

To assess the outcomes of diversity, equity, and inclusion activities, the auditors said they interviewed UW institutions, considered select plans they provided, and identified the one strategic plan or the one diversity, equity, and inclusion plan that in their auditor judgment contained key activities that a given UW institution worked on in fiscal year (FY) 2023-24. 

“These plans listed a total of 167 activities,” the report found. “In FY 2023-24, UW institutions worked on 94 of the 167 activities (56.3 percent). The plans do not consistently identify key information about the 94 activities, including specific actions UW institutions need to take in order to complete the activities and the dates for completing the activities.”

The auditors also assessed anticipated outcomes associated with the 94 activities and found that 47, or 50 percent, were likely easy for UW institutions to measure, and the anticipated outcomes associated with 22 activities (23.4 percent) were likely difficult to measure. A total of 18 activities had no anticipated outcomes, and seven activities had anticipated outcomes that restate the activities.

In 2023-24, UW institutions spent $40.2 million on offices with job duties pertaining to DEI, the auditors found, while that same year UW institutions had 170 positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion with $12.5 million of estimated salary costs.

In addition, Wimberger and Wittke observed in their statement, no UW institution tracked how much it spent on DEI, including UW-Madison, whom the lawmakers say had to reassign their DEI chancellor for misuse of funds.

DEI also increased administrative bloat, Wimberger and Wittke charged in their statement, pointing out that 12 academic schools and colleges at UW-Madison now employ administrators dedicated to DEI. 

“Plans indicate these officials work in collaboration with the University’s Chief Diversity Officer, who was removed from his position due alleged financial mismanagement found in an internal investigation triggered by this audit,” Wimberger and Wittke stated.

For state agencies, those agencies required to develop equity and inclusion action plans outlined 192 DEI-related actions they expected to complete in fiscal year 2023-24, but completed just 81 actions, or 42 percent. 

“In just one year, agency staff spent 4,990 hours attending DEI committee meetings, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary costs,” Wimberger and Wittke stated. “In 2023, 23 state agencies spent an estimated $705,300 in salary costs for time spent attending DEI training.”

In 2022, the lawmakers observed, the audit report said DOA found that five of the 21 agencies did not consistently comply with open meetings laws. 

“However, the Legislative Audit Bureau found that at least six agencies did not consistently comply with open meetings laws, and three did not keep minutes, including six agencies that did not provide public notice of meetings,” they said.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.