Republican state Representative Bill Kramer, the former Assembly Majority Leader, yesterday reported to jail to begin serving his five month sentence following a sexual assault conviction, but he won’t be giving up his taxpayer-funded salary.
That’s according to the Wisconsin State Journal, which today reported that Kramer would continue to draw his legislative salary from jail despite convictions on two counts of sexual assault. In March of 2014 Kramer was charged with two felony counts of sexual assault, but reached a plea deal late last month that reduced the charges to misdemeanors.
Kramer was stripped of his leadership position in the Assembly after being charged in March, but didn’t face any pressure from Speaker Robin Vos or his colleagues in the Assembly to resign his position — even after being convicted.
“Bill Kramer sexually assaulted at least one woman and faced allegations from two others — it is an absolute outrage that Robin Vos refused to expel him from the Assembly or at the very least publicly demand his resignation,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Melissa Baldauff said Friday. “And it is the height of hypocrisy that Scott Walker and Robin Vos’s Republican party continues to roll back the rights of women who are victims of sexual assault but has no problem with one of their own collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck while in jail for sexual assault.”
