Marathon County Board Upholds Administrator’s Suspension Despite Protests

A sharply divided Marathon County Board voted last night not to overturn the suspension of administrator Brad Karger for participating in a Hmong peace march and rally in May. The board wasn’t swayed by an outpouring of support for Karger at the meeting.

The board voted last month to suspend Karger without pay for 30 days after he angered local law enforcement leaders for supporting Dylan Yang, a Hmong teenager accused of stabbing 13-year-old Isaiah Powell to death during a February 2015 fight. Yang, who was 15 at the time of the fight, was tried in adult court and could get 60 years in prison. Yang’s supporters said he was bullied in school.

Of the 20 people who spoke at last night’s meeting, only one of them thought Karger should have been suspended. Lifelong county resident Gerald Borchardt said he thought Karger should have been fired.

“He’s divided the community, and when you make a mistake, you pay for it,” Borchardt said. “I don’t care what it is you pay for it.”

The organizers of the May 31 Hmong peace march, which attracted an estimated 500 people, said the purpose of the rally was to call for changes in the state’s criminal justice system. The protesters marched to the Marathon County Courthouse and to the headquarters of the Wausau School District.

At the rally, Karger shouted, “I am Dylan,” before the large crowd. He also said, “when I was 15 years old, my judgment wasn’t particularly good. If the circumstances were right, if I was in a bullying situation, who knows what I could have done.”

“What good is being a community leader if you don’t use it for something?” Karger said in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio the same day.

More than 2,000 signatures supporting Karger have been gathered from around the country, said Kue Her, who organized the online petition drive.

“Most of them (the signatures) were from Wisconsin, the second was from Minnesota, and then we had lots from California, but out of our 50 states, there were 34 out of 50 represented. This issue spills beyond the Marathon County Board. The whole nation is watching to see how the board will react,” Her said.

At a Marathon County executive committee meeting last week, Cher Yeng Khang spoke through a translator to the committee. Khang fought beside U.S. troops in Laos at the age of 14.

“I am here because I believe in the freedom that we protected. I believe in the freedom that Brad Karger has in the U.S. Constitution,” Khang said. “We don’t have freedom. Our troops died for nothing.”

In June, Yang’s sentencing date was moved from July 12 to Sept. 6. Yang, who was found guilty of first-degree reckless homicide, has a new defense attorney, according to NBC News.

Karger said he would have done some things differently at the rally, but he does not regret being a part of it.

“I still think it was an important stand on an important issue of public policy, and I did it in support of one 16 year old Marathon County resident,” he said.

The administrator returns to work on Wednesday. He said he has not ruled out a lawsuit. The vote to uphold the suspension was 17 to 15.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated.