Prosecutors charge Wisconsin legislator with misdemeanor after blowup over Hispanic resolution

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors charged a Wisconsin legislator with disorderly conduct Wednesday in connection with a feud over who was involved with drafting resolutions honoring Hispanics last year.

Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, a Milwaukee Democrat, faces up to 90 days in jail if she’s convicted in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Online court records didn’t list an attorney for her and she didn’t immediately respond to a voicemail message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

According to a criminal complaint, the feud began in August as Democrats were planning resolutions honoring Hispanic heritage and Hispanic veterans in observance of Hispanic Heritage Month in September.

Ortiz-Velez grew angry because she thought the legislator drafting the heritage resolution had intentionally excluded her from working on it. The legislator is not named in the complaint.

Ortiz-Velez had been invited to work on the resolution in June, chose not to participate, but still wanted to help draft the language, according to the complaint.

Ortiz-Velez contacted media outlets saying she’d been intentionally excluded from the resolution. She also told the resolution’s author that she felt excluded from working on another resolution that same legislator was crafting honoring Hispanic veterans, saying her late husband was a Hispanic veteran.

Two more lawmakers — both unnamed in the complaint — told investigators that Ortiz-Velez told them in separate phone conversations that she was going to spread “negative personal information” about the resolutions’ author to the media and that “they are going to do what I want them to do, or I’m going to x, y and z.”

When one of the lawmakers asked her what that meant, she made comments about the resolutions’ author’s personal life and other legislators. The complaint characterized those remarks as “indecent and tended to disrupt the good public order.”

The complaint did not elaborate on Ortiz-Velez’s comments and offered no other specifics about the situation.

Democratic leaders issued a statement in September saying Ortiz-Velez had made a comment about shooting three caucus members. That statement came a day after another statement announcing that Ortiz-Velez was leaving the Democratic caucus. In interviews with the news website Wisconsin Right Now and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ortiz-Velez denied that she threatened her colleagues.

Ortiz-Velez won a third term representing central Milwaukee in November 2024. She told Wisconsin Right Now that she has endured years of “unacceptable, very vicious, vile and cruel” treatment from members of her caucus and that party leadership allowed it.

The Legislature’s website still listed Ortiz-Velez’s party affiliation as Democrat on Wednesday. Messages left with aides for Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer and Republican Speaker Robin Vos weren’t returned.