Assembly committee passes bill to expand expungement.

Byline: Michaela Paukner, mpaukner@wislawjournal.com

A bill to extend expungement eligibility to more people is moving forward in the Wisconsin Assembly.

The Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety on Thursday unanimously passed Assembly Bill 69, which would allowjudges to order expungement after sentence completion and removes the age limit for expungement.

Judges can now order expungement if the conviction is for a Class H felony or below, the crime wasn't violent, the person committed the crime before age 25 and has no previous felony conviction. Expungement is contingent upon sentence completion and must be ordered during sentencing.

Before passingthe bill, the committee voted on an amendment offered by Rep. Cody Horlacher, R-Mukwonago, on Tuesday. It added stalking, vandalism of a business, trespassing of a dwelling and violations of a restraining order as crimes excluded from expungement. Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, said some people who can now have their records expunged for some of those offenses won't be ablewith this amendment.

"I think some of these ultimately express a lack of faith in our judiciary," McGuire said. "What this change does is remove this discretion based on the nature of the offense."

Rep. Shae...