Grand Chute supervisor charged with felony allowed to present evidence he acted in 'good faith'
APPLETON – Grand Chute town supervisor Ron Wolff will be permitted to present evidence at trial that he acted in good faith when accepting a contract from the town for his private business, a judge ruled Friday.
Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis' courtroom was packed Friday morning for a motion hearing addressing a couple of matters in the ongoing case against Wolff, who is charged with having private interest in a public contract, a Class I felony.
In June 2021, Grand Chute hired Wolff's landscaping company, Lake Shore Cleaners Inc., to do plantings around the ponds at the Champion Center, at 5000 W. Champion Drive.
Wolff was sworn in as town supervisor April 13, 2021. His company, Lake Shore Cleaners, submitted a bid for the project about a month later, on May 11.
In March 2022, state agents conducted a search warrant on Wolff's house. Over a year later, in July 2023, Wolff was charged with the felony.
Wolff's attorney, Nathan Otis, aims to present evidence at trial that Wolff acted in good faith and his actions do not make him liable for a crime.
When Wolff submitted this bid for the project, he was "a brand new elected official within several weeks of taking office," Otis said Friday. Additionally, Wolff did not seek out for his company to do the project, but he was "directly solicited" by engineering and architecture firm McMahon Associates, Inc, which has a contract with the Town of Grand Chute, to provide a quote. He was also informed by town officials that his actions were legal.
Assistant Attorneys General Nathaniel Adamson and Robert Kaiser, Jr., who are prosecuting the case, argue that as an elected official, Wolff had ethical obligations that he failed to follow and a month to understand what he was and was not permitted to do in his new role. Adamson argued Wolff did not act in good faith because he showed "willful ignorance of his duties to his constituents."
People have attended hearings in support of Wolff since the start of the case. Prior to Friday's hearing, Wolff shared an email with Grand Chute residents inviting them to sit in.
"You won't find this in the Post-Crescent," the email stated. "Reach out to me and I will send two documents that will open your eyes as to what is going on in the Town of Grand Chute."
A reporter reached out to Wolff for details, but received no response.
What was decided at Friday's motion hearing?
McGinnis ruled on two motions.
The first, a motion from the prosecution to bar irrelevant defense arguments, was denied. Adamson and Kaiser wanted to prevent the defense from discussing at trial the facts that Wolff was the only bidder and that his bid was close to the town of Grand Chute's estimate, on the grounds that that information is not a defense to the criminal charge against Wolff.
In response, Otis argued that the amount of Lake Shore Cleaners' bid is relevant to the charge against him, because in March 2021, before Wolff was elected to the town board, Grand Chute authorized about $23,800 to be spent toward the Champion Center project, while Wolff's bid for the project was around $26,865.
Otis argued that Wolff's contract was not in excess of $15,000 required by state statute to be a felony, since his estimate was only about $3,000 more than the amount the city already approved for the project before Wolff took office.
Prosecutors and McGinnis said they had not considered that interpretation of the law. McGinnis said it is a different argument from the affirmative defense, and did not make a decision Friday about whether it will be allowed at trial.
The second motion, which was filed by the defense, asked McGinnis to either dismiss the case or allow Wolff to present "a good faith affirmative defense." An affirmative defense allows a defendant to not deny they engaged in illegal actions, but present evidence that negates liability for the crime.
McGinnis declined the request to dismiss the case but granted the defense's motion to allow Wolff to take a good faith affirmative defense at trial.
"I think this was obviously what we were hoping for," Otis told The Post-Crescent about McGinnis' ruling. "Ron was somebody who wasn't trying to do anything wrong. He was told by the town officials that what he was doing was necessary and in fact appropriate to provide a service for the town. We're looking forward to presenting that evidence at trial and I think a jury's going to reach the same conclusion."
What comes next?
Wolff is scheduled to face trial on Feb. 28 and 29 — although attorneys questioned Friday if they may need more days.
Attorneys and McGinnis discussed next steps, including disclosing witnesses and picking a jury. The next hearing on the court calendar is a pretrial conference, scheduled for 1:15 p.m. Feb. 19.
What is the timeline of related legal battles in Grand Chute?
Grand Chute is in the midst of various legal battles related to this case.
In March 2022, Wolff and his wife, Karri Wolff, filed a federal lawsuit in which they alleged their civil rights were violated when law enforcement, including Outagamie County Sheriff's deputies and Wisconsin Department of Justice state agents, executed a search warrant on his properties. The lawsuit was dismissed in October, when U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled the investigators' actions were protected under the doctrine of qualified immunity.
In May 2023, Former Town Administrator Jim March filed a federal lawsuit against Grand Chute, Town Chair Jason Van Eperen and supervisors Jeff Ings and Wolff, alleging he was fired in retaliation for cooperating with state investigation into Wolff. The case is ongoing.
In July 2023, Wolff was charged with a felony for having private interest in a public contract.
In December 2023, Wolff filed a counter-lawsuit to March's lawsuit, alleging March set him up to be charged with a crime for the Champion Center landscaping project. Wolff claims March planned to entrap Wolff either so Wolff would need to leave the Grand Chute Town Board or so that Wolff would abandon his political platform of abolishing Grand Chute's use of special assessments to pay for public improvements.
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Duke Behnke contributed to this report.
Kelli Arseneau can be reached at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @ArseneauKelli.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Grand Chute supervisor charged with felony allowed to present evidence he acted in 'good faith'
