UPDATED
I am sure there is one heck of a search warrant with this case.
Deputies from the Dane County Sheriff’s Department are also present at the home at 502 Dunning St. on Madison’s East Side.
City of Madison property records identify the home as belonging to Cynthia A. Archer, the former deputy administration secretary to the Republican governor.
“We’re doing a law enforcement action,” one of the FBI agents told a reporter.
He didn’t identify himself or provide further comment but confirmed that he and three others were with the FBI and that Dane County sheriff’s deputies were also involved.
One of the agents had a large camera and two of them were wearing latex gloves. They spent time in the backyard and then went into the house. One also removed a large banker’s box and put it in the truck of a car.
A neighbor said about a dozen law enforcement officers arrived around 6:45 a.m.
Cindy Archer, who abruptly left her top post with the Walker’s administration last month for “personal family matters,” had another politically appointed job under the governor already lined up.
She took a $25,000 pay cut in moving to a position at the Department of Children and Families, but the nearly $100,000 salary in that job is still tens of thousands of dollars more than the pay of others who have had the job.
State officials have said Archer remained on leave. Department spokeswoman Stephanie Hayden has not answered whether Archer was being paid while on leave, saying that was confidential.
Archer, 52, followed Walker to Madison from Milwaukee County after the former county executive won the governor’s race in November. She had held the county’s top staff position under Walker.
Before she abruptly quit on Aug. 19, she was making $124,000 as deputy secretary in the state Department of Administration, the agency that oversees state contracts, the state budget, the state workforce and other key government functions. At the time, state officials said only that Archer had taken a personal leave of absence, giving no details on reasons for the leave, how soon she’d come back or what her duties would be.
Archer, in her resignation letter emailed to Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, said simply that she was done with her job that same day.
But documents provided by the state show she actually was already hired a day earlier on Aug. 18 to the $99,449-a-year job in the Department of Children and Families, as the department’s legislative liaison, according to a letter released Friday from Eloise Anderson, who heads the department. Her appointment to the new job was effective Aug. 20. Anderson’s letter says Archer would be “performing duties as prescribed by this office.”
Anderson said Monday that Archer has a higher salary than her predecessor because of Archer’s extensive background in state and local government and higher educational attainment.
On Aug. 25, Archer said by email that she would leave any announcement about her leave of absence or eventual return to a state job to the governor’s office. She said her leave of absence was for “personal family matters.” Walker’s office has deflected questions on Archer to the department she left and to the one to which she is now assigned.
Archer’s departure coincides with a growing John Doe investigation in Milwaukee County, started last year after the disclosure that a Walker staffer at the county had posted political commentary on websites while on her job in the county executive’s office.
In her email Friday, Archer said she was “not involved in any way in the John Doe investigation.”
A John Doe is an investigation in which witnesses give testimony in a closed proceeding before a judge to determine if any laws were broken.
Tom Nardelli, another former county employee who took a state job with Walker, quit his state job as administrator for the Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services in July. That was three days after he had accepted the job, a transfer from another state administrative position. Nardelli was Walker’s chief of staff in the county executive’s office.
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