In early April, I requested some records from the Madison Police Department regarding what it said was the sole disciplinary action taken against an MPD officer or employee in the first three months of this year. 

It was an exceedingly minor matter — a sergeant who got a one-day suspension for sending an “unprofessional email to command staff.” And all I wanted was to see the complaint that would disclose what the email said and some document that explained how the matter was concluded. Just a few sheets of paper.

The response I received said the request had to go through the MPD’s records custodian, Julie Laundrie, who informed me: “I am currently at 14 months for personnel requests to receive [a] reply.”

Fourteen months? 

Laundrie’s official explanation is that she puts requests for personnel records into a queue with other, often voluminous requests, which are handled in order. (The office now says it may just be a few more weeks.) But the real reason for the delay is that the department, like too many other public agencies in Wisconsin, does not devote enough resources to handling records requests.

It’s a problem that has grown markedly worse in recent years, as agencies have gotten bolder in exploiting the lack of specificity in the state’s open records law regarding the question of “How long is too long?”

The Madison Metropolitan School District, for instance, has been sued at least five times since 2021 for long delays in responding to records requests, while a staff position for records work went unfilled. Like some other records custodians, the district seems to think “We’re busy doing other things” is an acceptable reason for not providing records in a timely fashion. It isn’t.

The state’s open records law, enacted in 1981, directs all state and local government officials to respond to records requests “as soon as practicable and without delay,” but sets no precise time frames. The state’s attorney general’s office, which has statutory authority to interpret and enforce this law, has long advised that “a reasonable time” for responding to most simple requests is ten working days, although actually providing the records may take longer. 

Gov. Scott Walker passed executive orders in 2016 and 2017 that set tighter response times for state agencies — requiring them, for instance, to fulfill and not just respond to “small and straightforward” requests within 10 business days when possible. But those rules did not apply to local governments and are no longer considered binding past Walker’s term.

The AG’s Office of Open Government, under both Democratic and  Republican leadership, has not taken a hard line against records custodians for taking too long. And indeed, a report by the Wisconsin Examiner found that the office itself had more than three dozen records requests that remained unfulfilled after more than a year. The office met its own 10-day guideline for just 46% of the 924 records requests it received in 2022.

This is not okay. A vital but often overlooked part of the open records law says providing records in response to requests “is declared to be an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties of officers and employees whose responsibility it is to provide such information.”

If an agency lacks staff to handle the volume of requests it receives, it should allocate more staff, as happened recently with the city attorney’s office in Green Bay, which had fallen behind in handling requests. 

Responding promptly to record requests is not just a good government best practice. It’s the law. And sooner or later, the courts are going to have to enforce it.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the Council’s president.

Your Right to Know: Record delays are contrary to the law is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A group of residents concerned about the impact of a local park redevelopment, a school board member who blew the whistle on his colleagues for being too secretive, and a longtime city official who has made a habit of accessibility are among the winners in this year’s Openness Awards, or Opees, bestowed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. 

Also being honored are news outlets that fought for and used records to break important stories. Meanwhile, a school district that has demonstrated “casual contempt for the public’s right to know” is being singled out for negative recognition. 

The awards, announced today in advance of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 12-18, recognize outstanding efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government — and highlight some threats to it. 

This is the 17th consecutive year that Opees have been awarded. Winners will receive a certificate suitable for framing and be invited to attend the Wisconsin Watchdog Awards annual reception and dinner, which will take place sometime this fall. 

“This was an uncommonly flush year in terms of the number of nominations that were received and it was not easy to decide on just a few,” said Bill Lueders, council president. “There is much that is happening to advance the cause of open government in Wisconsin.” 

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan group that seeks to promote open government, consists of about two dozen members representing media and other public interests. Sponsoring organizations include the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and the Madison Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. 

The judging committee for this year consisted of Lueders, Wisconsin State Journal editor Kelly Lecker, Capital Times editor Mark Treinen, former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Ideas Lab” editor David Haynes, and Sam Martino of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Awards are being given this year in six categories. The winners are: 

Public Openness Award (“Popee”): Jim O’Keefe 

This longtime legislative analyst for the city of Madison and now director of its Community Development Division was nominated by Judith Davidoff, editor of the? Isthmus newspaper in Madison, for his “extraordinary” accessibility under four mayors. In an era where, she noted, “it is now rare for public administrators to answer their own phones and talk directly to reporters,” O’Keefe goes the extra mile, even intervening to help a reporter who was having trouble getting a call-back from someone else in city government. In recognizing O’Keefe, we also acknowledge the many other public officials in Wisconsin who regard transparency as a blessing and not a burden. 

Media Openness Award (“Mopee”): The Badger Project 

This nonpartisan, nonprofit and citizen-supported investigative reporting outlet, led by managing editor Peter Cameron, pulled back the veil on police officers who are disciplined and even fired for misconduct only to be hired by other law enforcement agencies. It has filed lawsuits to pry loose relevant records against two police departments (La Crosse and Wausau) and used a list maintained by the state Department of Justice to shine a light on these cases. The outlet’s reporting on this issue began in 2021, when it revealed that nearly 200 Wisconsin officers have been rehired after being fired or forced out, and it is ongoing. 

Citizen Openness Award (“Copee”): Friends of Frame Park 

Concerned about a proposed baseball stadium that would have transformed a local park in Waukesha, this group of local residents fought all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to defend the public’s right to access records regarding the details of the plan, such as how much it would cost taxpayers. Sadly, the court’s conservative majority, in a 4-3 vote, reversed an appellate court ruling and gutted the fee-shifting provisions in the state’s open records law, for which a legislative fix is now being sought. 

Open Records Scoop of the Year (“Scoopee”): “Cash Not Care,” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

The state’s largest newspaper proved its mettle for the umpteenth time in this powerful series of articles by reporters Cary Spivak and Mary Spicuzza. They examined the high infant mortality among Black people in Wisconsin while exposing malfeasance in a shadowy network of businesses known as prenatal care coordination companies. They spent months filing public records requests, reviewing thousands of pages of documents, conducting interviews and doing shoe-leather reporting. The series led to increased scrutiny of these companies by state officials.

Whistleblower of the Year (“Whoopee”): Mike Meier 

This member of the Wauwatosa School Board alleged that the board met improperly to discuss how to respond to a records request and that he was punished by the board president for being more open than necessary. Meier is a quoted source in several articles about a school administrator who helped steer a contract to consultants who employed her husband. In the end, both the administrator and board president resigned. Pushing back against the charge that he revealed too much, Meier said, “Our whole system counts on the elected officials being watched in the public square as to how they conduct their business.” 

No Friend of Openness (“Nopee”): The Madison Metropolitan School District

It’s rare for a public institution that depends on taxpayer support to be as awful as this one when it comes to public records and accountability. The district, through spokesperson Tim LeMonds, has become notorious for outrageous delays and excuses, prompting multiple lawsuits alleging violations of the records law. Tom Kamenick, the president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, wrote in an email to the Capital Times that he has “received more complaints about MMSD than any other government agency.” It is time for the district’s casual contempt for the public’s right to know to come to a screeching halt.

Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council names ‘Opee’ winners is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Many people in Wisconsin are under the impression that the disastrous probe into the state’s 2020 presidential election conducted by former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is over, as are its costs to taxpayers. They’re wrong.

The probe, conducted over 14 months by Gableman at the behest of Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, failed to find any evidence of significant fraud. It did, however, reveal ample evidence of incompetence on the part of Gableman and his team, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), including multiple spelling errors. It also led to contempt charges against both Vos and Gableman, and to a judge’s referral of Gableman to the office that regulates attorney conduct for his disgraceful behavior during a court proceeding.

Vos, whose name the OSC routinely rendered as “Voss,” fired Gableman last August, after relations between the two had soured to where Gableman endorsed the speaker’s GOP primary opponent. At the time, the cost of the probe and associated records battles was tallied at more than $1.1 million, all paid for with taxpayer dollars. Remarked state Sen. Melissa Agard (D-Madison): “I’m glad that Speaker Vos has stopped the bleeding for these tax dollars going to a sham investigation.”

In fact, the bleeding never stopped. The amount paid by taxpayers now stands at more than $2 million, including nearly $1.5 million in legal fees, according to a report by WisPolitics.com; it could yet rise by hundreds of thousands more. That’s in part because Vos and attorneys for OSC are continuing to drag out litigation over the four records-related lawsuits brought by American Oversight, a liberal watchdog group.

One case, involving contractors’ records controlled by Vos, awaits resolution on various issues, including whether American Oversight can recover its in-house counsel fees. Vos is arguing, against logic and history, that attorneys who work for a group bringing a fight cannot recover their fees. A second case, involving records in Vos’ own files, is being briefed in the circuit court on attorneys’ fees; which Vos is contending are too high, though they are well within the norm. 

A third case, in which a judge ruled in American Oversight’s favor and awarded it $197,510 in attorneys’ fees, is being appealed over every aspect, including attorneys’ fees and a contempt finding against the OSC. The group’s attorney, Jim Bopp, received permission from the court to file a 35,000-word brief, more than three times the usual limit. In this case, according to WisPolitics.com, “Assembly Republicans have already spent more fighting a judge’s order that they cover legal fees for American Oversight than the $197,510 taxpayers are currently on the hook to pay.”

A fourth case, regarding preservation of OSC records, remains pending.

In all of these legal challenges, taxpayers are footing the bill for the outside counsel; if American Oversight prevails, which I think is likely, taxpayers will also have to cover the group’s legal costs.   

“All of this could have been avoided if Speaker Vos and OSC had simply followed the law” by preserving and providing records of their investigation, says Heather Sawyer, executive director at American Oversight.

Enough already. It’s time for Vos and the Legislature to truly turn off the spigot of tax dollars flowing into this ill-begotten cause.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the council’s president.

Your Right to Know: Wisconsin taxpayers still paying for election fraud probe records fights is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Most of the time, public officials in Wisconsin obey the state’s openness laws. Sometimes, they need a little prodding from the courts. But the recent conduct of Robin Vos and Michael Gableman is something altogether new, and deeply disturbing.

Both Vos, the speaker of the state Assembly, and Gableman, whom Vos hired at taxpayer expense (more than $1 million and counting) to look for fraud in the 2020 election, have been cited for contempt of court regarding open records requests.

Vos, the architect of a failed 2015 attempt to gut the state’s open records law, was held in contempt by Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn, for failing to produce records as ordered or explain why he couldn’t. He responded by lashing out at Bailey-Rihn, calling her “a liberal judge in Dane County trying to make us look bad.” Bailey-Rihn later opted not to impose penalties for contempt, but Vos (read: taxpayers) might yet have to pay associated legal costs.

Similarly, Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington found Gableman’s Office of Special Counsel in contempt over its handling of records requests and referred the former justice to the Office of Lawyer Regulation for possible disciplinary action for his disgraceful conduct during a court proceeding.

Gableman sneeringly refused to answer questions from Christa Westerberg, an attorney representing American Oversight, a group seeking records regarding Gableman’s probe, and vice president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

Gableman’s conduct was “misogynistic” and “an affront to the judicial process and an insult to Atty. Westerberg,” Remington wrote in his contempt order. “The circus Gableman created in the courtroom destroyed any sense of decorum and irreparably damaged the public’s perception of the judicial process.”

Gableman is appealing the $2,000-per-day penalty as “grossly disproportionate to the violation.”

At a subsequent hearing in which he managed to maintain his composure, Gableman admitted that he has routinely destroyed records he considers not relevant to his investigation.

“Did I delete documents? Yes, I did,” he told the court. These include his notes from trips he took on the taxpayer’s dime to Arizona to watch the widely ridiculed recount and to South Dakota to hear My Pillow founder Mike Lindell make baseless allegations of electoral fraud. (“I didn’t find anything that I could use during that seminar,” Gableman testified.)

Indiana attorney James Bopp Jr., representing Gableman’s Office of Special Counsel, argued in an April 8 letter that, absent a pending records request, there is no statutory requirement that records be preserved. But the Wisconsin Legislative Council, a nonpartisan service agency, had previously determined that this office was required to retain these records.

That’s right: Bopp declared from his perch in Indiana that he knew more about Wisconsin’s rules than the state itself. Gableman attained the same level of hubris in contending to reporters, “If I had to keep every scrap of paper I would do nothing else. I would need a warehouse.”

Really? A warehouse? How many taxpayer-funded records has Gableman destroyed?

In fact, released records reveal, among other things, that the work for which Gableman was pocketing $11,000 per month (it has since been cut in half) was, in the estimation of Judge Bailey-Rihn, “minimal.” Gableman is now being sued again by American Oversight, over his destruction of records.

Clearly, the state Legislature must do a better job of ensuring that those it hires are complying with their obligations under the state’s transparency laws. And Robin Vos and Michael Gableman should be held accountable for treating these laws with contempt.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, former editor and now editor-at-large of The Progressive, is the group’s president.

Your Right to Know: When transparency is treated with contempt is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A citizen concerned about plans to develop a city park, an alderperson who felt his
colleagues broke the law and a district attorney who filed charges against a town
for open records violations are among the winners in this year’s Openness Awards,
or Opees, bestowed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

The awards, announced today in advance of national Sunshine Week
(sunshineweek.org), March 13-19, recognize outstanding efforts to protect the
state’s tradition of open government — and highlight some threats to it.

This is the 16th consecutive year that Opees have been awarded. They will be
presented at the Wisconsin Watchdog Awards reception and dinner, on Thursday,
April 21, at the Madison Club in Madison, beginning at 5 p.m.

Online registration for the 2022 Wisconsin Watchdog Awards reception and dinner

“Like all areas of civic life, the pursuit of transparency in government has heroes
and villains, both of whom deserve recognition,” said Bill Lueders, council
president. “Our openness laws are only as strong as our willingness to defend
them.”

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, a nonpartisan group that seeks to
promote open government, consists of about two dozen members representing
media and other public interests. Sponsoring organizations include the Wisconsin
Newspaper Association, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and the Madison
Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Awards are being given this year in six categories. The winners are:

Citizen Openness Award (“Copee”): Christine Brennan

When a proposed Fond du Lac park redevelopment didn’t pass the smell test, this citizen asked to see the records of communications between public officials and project backers. When the city asked her for $6,888 on top of the $1,000 she had already paid to locate these records, she balked. Her experience helped raise public awareness of abusive location fee costs and led to better methods for archiving records in Fond du Lac. And the released records spurred a backlash against the project and the city council members who supported it.

Political Openness Award (“Popee”): Winnebago County District Attorney’s Office

While state district attorneys have statutory authority to bring open records and open meeting enforcement actions, they seldom do. But Eric Sparr, the deputy district attorney of Winnebago County, and his boss, District Attorney Christian Gossett, cut against the grain when they charged Town of Omro officials on eight counts for open records violations. A hearing on the charges is set for March 11.

Honorable mention: Tony Evers

Wisconsin’s governor this year vetoed a bill that unanimously passed both houses of the Legislature to create a new legislative human resources office with built-in secrecy provisions. He also proposed in his budget to raise the threshold for when records custodians can tack on location costs from $50 to $100.

Media Openness Award (“Mopee”): Isiah Holmes, Wisconsin Examiner

Holmes and this online news outlet have made prodigious use of the state’s open records law to unearth often shocking information on Wauwatosa’s police department, which deemed Wauwatosa Mayor Dennis McBride a “target” and maintained a watchlist of protesters and that Holmes himself was on for covering the protests as a journalist. Exposing such abuses serves the highest purpose of our open records law.

Open Records Scoop of the Year (“Scoopee”): The  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s largest daily paper and reporters including John Diedrich, Raquel Rutledge and Daphne Chen used city inspection reports and other records to produce a series of stories that exposed how dangerous electrical wiring has for years been causing fires and claiming victims in Milwaukee rental units. The series, “Wires and Fires,” spurred city officials to seek ways to prevent these fires from occurring.

Whistleblower of the Year: Douglas Oitzinger 

This alderperson in the city of Marinette stood up to his fellow city council members in favor of transparency when he filed suit in December alleging that they had improperly gone into closed session to discuss water supply options. “This is about open government,” he told the local paper. “That’s all it’s about.”

No Friend of Openness (“Nopee”): Michael Gableman and Robin Vos

What exactly is Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice, doing for the $676,000 in taxpayer funds that Vos, the speaker of the state Assembly, agreed to pay him? Neither Gableman nor Vos seem to want people to know, despite a judge’s finding that their “denials, delays, and refusals” violate the records law. In fact, so few records have been provided in response to records requests that there is speculation that records are being destroyed. So is the state’s tradition of open government.

Related content: Nominations sought for 2022 Distinguished Wisconsin Watchdog Award

Online registration for the 2022 Wisconsin Watchdog Awards reception and dinner

Open Records Scoop of the Year (“Scoopee”): The Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
Wisconsin’s largest daily paper and reporters including John Diedrich, Raquel
Rutledge and Daphne Chen used city inspection reports and other records to
produce a series of stories that exposed how dangerous electrical wiring has for
years been causing fires and claiming victims in Milwaukee rental units. The
series, “Wires and Fires,” spurred city officials to seek ways to prevent these fires
from occurring.
Whistleblower of the Year: Douglas Oitzinger
This alderperson in the city of Marinette stood up to his fellow city council
members in favor of transparency when he filed suit in December alleging that
they had improperly gone into closed session to discuss water supply options.
“This is about open government,” he told the local paper. “That’s all it’s about.”
No Friend of Openness (“Nopee”): Michael Gableman and Robin Vos
What exactly is Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice, doing for the
$676,000 in taxpayer funds that Vos, the speaker of the state Assembly, agreed to
pay him? Neither Gableman nor Vos seem to want people to know, despite a
judge’s finding that their “denials, delays, and refusals” violate the records law. In
fact, so few records have been provided in response to records requests that there is
speculation that records are being destroyed. So is the state’s tradition of open
government.

Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council names ‘Opee’ winners is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Even Staush Gruszynski didn’t want this to happen.

The former state Assembly representative from Green Bay is the subject of an ongoing legal battle over records regarding his sexual harassment of a female staffer. A judge ruled in late June that the Legislature violated the state’s open records law in denying media requesters access to these records; that decision is now being appealed, at taxpayer expense.

But Gruszynski, who was defeated last year in a Democratic primary election after the allegations against him became known, says that, if it were up to him, the records the Assembly is still seeking to withhold would have been released long ago.

“We were trying to do that, but the Assembly rules wouldn’t allow us,” Gruszynski told me by phone recently. In fact, he got his own first look at the records when they were released to the media in August 2020, eight months after they were requested and one day after the election in which he was soundly defeated.

The records detailed the Legislature’s investigation of a legislative aide’s complaint that Gruszynski had drunkenly propositioned her in a bar, conduct to which he admitted. Redacted from the documents were some names and a portion of Gruszynski’s statement to investigators related to his health — presumably, his alcoholism.

Media including the Wisconsin State Journal, Capital Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Associated Press sued over the delay and redactions, which Dane County Judge Juan Colas agreed were improper.  He ordered the Assembly to provide unredacted versions and pay the media requesters’ legal costs. The appeal puts this on hold, and will drive those costs upward.

Gruszynski, who apologized for his behavior, stopped drinking, and attended anti-harassment training, says he would have liked for the records to have been released earlier.

“Without having the documents, we had nothing to contradict the claims that were being made,” Gruszynski says. “Personally and as a campaign, we would rather have had more information out.”

So now the Legislature is spending the public’s money to keep the public from seeing these records, contrary to the wishes of the main person they concern. 

Judge Colas issued his decision on June 30, the same day that the state Senate followed the state Assembly in unanimously voting to create a new Legislative Human Resources Office with built-in secrecy provisions for lawmakers and their staffs. 

The bill as approved would have required this office’s records be treated as “confidential,” giving the Legislature new ways to avoid complying with the law it just got caught breaking. 

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council sounded an alarm, and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers responded by vetoing the bill.

“The people of Wisconsin have a right to know about misconduct by public officials and employees, including those in the Legislature,” Evers wrote in his veto message. “I cannot support a bill that would be used to hide official misconduct from public scrutiny.”

It’s unclear whether the Legislature will attempt a veto override. Let’s hope not. How awful it would be if this were the rare issue that unites Democrats and Republicans — making it easier for them to cover up their own misconduct.

The people of Wisconsin should not let that happen.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.

Your Right to Know: Lawmakers seek to keep their misconduct secret is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

It happens all the time. 

A member of the public or representative of the press will file a request under Wisconsin’s open records law, which applies to all state and local government entities. But instead of records, the requester gets a bill.

“The city will require pre-payment in full before we begin fulfilling your request,” read one such response, dated March 17, to a citizen requester by the assistant city attorney of Fond du Lac. “Please remit $642.42 to cover the above-referenced costs.” The notice said this was just an estimate and, if necessary, “we will bill you for the additional cost.”

Two weeks earlier, the same assistant city attorney demanded that the same citizen requester, Christine Brennan, pay $6,887.79 on top of the $1,000 she had already remitted to cover the cost of locating records in a different request.

Wisconsin’s open records law, passed in 1981, allows records custodians to charge for the “actual, necessary and direct” cost of making and sending copies, as well as the “actual, necessary and direct” cost of locating them, if this latter charge exceeds $50. And even though these searches are supposed to be done by the lowest-paid employee capable of performing the task, they often add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars, causing many requesters to walk away without receiving the records to which they are entitled.

In some cases, this may be the intended result.

Last November, the Wisconsin Examiner news website reported on a 2016 email it has obtained in which Wauwatosa Police Department Detective John Milotzky advised a colleague that “many departments combat the issue (of records requests) by charging a high price to fill those requests, so maybe that’s something to look at in the future.”

In years past, some custodians even charged requesters for the time it took them to pore over records looking for things to black out, until the state Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that this was not an allowable cost. But custodians are still finding ways to demand huge sums from people seeking public information.

In Fond du Lac, the $1,000 that citizen requester Brennan paid to obtain records regarding a proposed (and subsequently approved) park development project using public funds yielded a 2019 email from a city council member advising others involved in this process, “Please keep that we are in talks on this on the down low. Stakeholders should be the only people who know that these conversations are happening.”    

Officials who behave this way should not be able to escape accountability by making the cost of locating the records that prove their perfidy unaffordable.

Gov. Tony Evers, in his proposed executive budget, calls for raising the threshold at which custodians can charge location fees to $100. Adjusted for inflation, $50 in 1981 is nearly $150 today. 

This welcome measure deserves bipartisan support, as it protects the ability of all citizens to obtain public records. But the Legislature should go further, and consider ending location fees altogether. Their use invites abuse and creates a disincentive for custodians to efficiently maintain and retrieve records. 

If a government office actually must spend $7,000 of staff time to locate records, perhaps it needs a better filing system.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, the editor of The Progressive, is the council’s president.

Your Right to Know: Record location fees invite abuses is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

For the 15th consecutive year, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is presenting its Openness in Government Awards, or Opees, recognizing outstanding achievement in the cause of transparency. Several of this years’ awards are related to the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced wholesale changes in how government officials conduct the public’s business. All are predicated on upholding the public’s right to know. 

And the winners are: 

Media Openness Award (“Mopee”): Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

Even in tough times, the state’s largest paper blazed a trail for open government. It fought recalcitrant officials to do records-based reporting on COVID-19 in long-term care facilities and meatpacking plants. It intervened in a lawsuit to oppose efforts to shield the names of businesses with COVID-19 cases. And it joined with other litigants in suing the state Legislature over its refusal to release records regarding misconduct investigations. 

Political Openness Award (“Popee”): Milwaukee County 

While some public entities embraced secrecy over COVID-19, this municipality was among the first in the nation to release racial and ethnic data linked to the pandemic. The county created a public dashboard of demographic information about cases, hospitalizations and deaths — data then used by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters and other members of the public. 

Citizen Openness Award (“Copee”): John Doe 

This unnamed person, represented by attorney Tom Kamenick of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, successfully sued the Madison Metropolitan School District to enforce the ability of citizens to get records anonymously, as the Open Records Law explicitly allows. (Too bad we’re not having an awards ceremony this year; he could have come incognito.) 

Open Records Scoop of the Year (“Scoopee”): Tie: Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Emily Hamer, Wisconsin State Journal 

Beck broke the story that Jim Troupis, President Donald Trump’s lead election lawyer in Wisconsin, filed a list of names of Wisconsin residents he claimed had cast illegal absentee votes which included himself and his wife. Beck checked the county’s list of absentee voters to confirm that Troupis was literally trying to disallow his own vote.

Meanwhile, the State Journal distinguished itself with Hamer’s persistent reporting on COVID-19 in the state’s prisons, including protracted efforts to procure relevant records and the development of courageous sources to reveal dangerous practices within the prison system. 

Whistleblower of the Year (“Whoopee”): Peter Tharp 

This municipal judge sued his tiny village of Roberts in St. Croix County over its failure to respond to more than 80 record requests made over a three-year period. In October, the village agreed to settle, providing more than 1,500 records and paying $7,500 in fees, costs and damages. Tharp also had his attorney, Tom Kamenick, file a complaint identifying deficiencies in the village’s Open Meetings practices, and send a letter urging improvement, which Kamenick says it has pledged to do. 

No Friend of Openness (“Nopee”): The UW System 

The state university system conducted its search for a new president in a shroud of secrecy, until only one finalist was left. Then that lone finalist backed out, in part due to the outcry over the process. The Board of Regents were forced to restart the process from scratch, urged by the Wisconsin State Journal to “learn from their mistakes.” That would be nice. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.

The ‘Opees’ in the age of COVID-19 is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Last January, a person involved in local emergency management asked the Office of Open Government, part of the state Justice Department, whether emergency preparedness coalitions run by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) are subject to the state’s open meetings and open records laws.

The answer to this question, it turns out, is yes. These laws apply to the state’s seven Wisconsin Regional Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalitions, critical entities in the age of COVID-19, meaning their meetings must be noticed and open to the public.

But arriving at this answer took nearly a year, which should not have happened.

The Office of Open Government replied to that Jan. 9 query nearly nine months later, on Sept. 29. Its response letter, one of 19 issued during the third quarter of 2020, was posted online in late October.

These long waits for response letters have been the norm for at least the last decade, even though they average only about two per week and consist largely of boilerplate used in previous letters. But eliminating this backlog has not been a priority under Attorney General Josh Kaul or his two predecessors, J.B. Van Hollen and Brad Schimel.

Moreover, these responses often fall short of providing clear answers. In the case at hand, the Office of Open Government laid out a complex analysis of operative court rulings, then said it “cannot make a definitive determination” as to whether the laws apply to these coalitions.

And so on October 28, I emailed Jeff Phillips, director of DHS’s Office of Preparedness and Emergency Health Care, asking whether the state’s openness laws applied to these coalitions. My subject line was “Quick question.” If only. 

Phillips contacted other DHS officials, prompting an exchange of emails that carefully avoided discussing the matter in any detail. This is an increasingly common strategy employed to keep useful information away from someone like me who might ask for email records (which I did). Rather, the officials arranged to meet online to arrive at a response.

After a number of these meetings took place without resolution, Phillips, who handled the matter with professionalism and cheer, emailed me on Nov. 25 to affirm that, yes, the state’s openness laws do apply to these coalitions. He said the DHS’s legal eagles will be providing the coalitions with “guidance as necessary.”

That’s good, because earlier that same day, the head of one of these coalitions responded to my request to attend its upcoming meeting by asking, “What healthcare preparedness organization are you with?” When I said I was just a member of the public hoping to observe a government meeting, there was no reply.

In my opinion, it should always have been clear that these meetings (where, truly, nothing nefarious happens) are open; public officials, in parsing these matters, should err on the side of openness, if they err at all. 

That’s the message that Attorney General Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers should be sending to state and local officials. But, in truth, both of them could do better in terms of providing leadership on issues related to open government. 

The state’s openness laws should not be seen as a burden, but as a way for public officials to build trust with the people they represent. Wisconsin needs a stronger commitment to transparency, from the top on down.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, the editor of The Progressive, is the group’s president.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: State must do more to promote openness is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Recently, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information issued a statement calling for greater transparency and accountability from law enforcement. They were joined by more than 50 groups, including the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, Wisconsin Newspaper Association, and the Wisconsin Transparency Project.

“Trust is a key element in police-citizen relationships. Secrecy is the enemy of trust,” the statement noted. “Effective oversight of law enforcement requires meaningfully improving the flow of information to the public, both as a matter of law and as a matter of culture.”

The police killings of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Breonna Taylor, among others, as well as video footage of police using excessive force in dealing with protesters, have underscored the need for changes in policing, including greater access to disciplinary records.

It is time to break down some of the barriers that prevent the public from getting a full and true picture of how police perform — sometimes laudable, sometimes not — and how government agencies respond to allegations of misconduct.

Wisconsin, according to one survey, is among just 12 states in the nation in which records of police disciplinary investigations are generally available to the public. But there are still opportunities for improvement.

For one thing, the law builds unnecessary delays into the process, to afford police officers, like all public employees, an opportunity to sue to block the release of disciplinary records. It also enables departments to deny access to records while an investigation is pending, in the absence of any proof that secrecy makes the process work better.

Early this year, the Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed into law a bill regarding the use of police body cameras. While it does a good job of balancing the public’s right to know against legitimate privacy interests, it still allows police agencies to withhold video of ongoing investigations, something that doesn’t happen with video taken by onlookers and not police.

That means, in some cases, the public can only see the video that it is not paying for. 

The National FOIC and Brechner Center argue that every aspect of the police misconduct oversight process should be open to public scrutiny. 

“Only by seeing the substance of each complaint, how it is resolved, and what consequences are imposed can the public trust that justice is being dispensed without favor,” the statement says. 

“We understand the difficult challenge police officers face each day in their work. While they have a unique position in our communities, they are still public employees—but with extraordinary power to use deadly force, to search private homes, and to detain and arrest.”

Thus we should insist on maximum transparency.

Yes, there are times when police draw complaints that are unfounded and unfair. But the public should have a right to see even these, with the expectation that ordinary people can make rational judgments about their nature and how they are addressed. 

We should not have to trust the police to police themselves. Trust will come only when we are allowed to see inside the process.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, the editor of The Progressive, is the Council’s president.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: Raise the bar on police transparency is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Believe it or not, this has been a relatively quiet time on the open government front.

In my role with the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, I often field calls from reporters and citizens regarding the problems they are experiencing getting access to public meetings and records.

In recent weeks, those calls are down, way down, from maybe two a day to one a week.

This is happening during a time of tremendous upheaval in how meetings are being conducted in Wisconsin, now that they cannot take place in an actual group setting. 

Literally thousands of state and local public bodies are having to implement new methods and embrace new technologies to allow their members and the public to attend meetings through their computers and phones. It’s a vast and transformative undertaking. 

I suspect that this has not worked perfectly in any quarter, but I have heard complaints from none. That’s a good thing.

One Madison resident even expressed in a letter to the editor that it was actually easier to “attend” a meeting remotely via the video-conferencing app Zoom, which allows members of the public to register for or against specific proposals, and submit written and verbal comments.

At a time when the actions and inactions of government can literally be matters of life and death, government bodies are doing their level best to include the public — because they want the public’s attention and they need the public’s help.

My group’s statement on open meetings in the age of COVID-19, issued on March 16, acknowledges the “important work being done by those who serve on public bodies across the state” and “applaud(s) their efforts to operate in as open and transparent a manner as possible.”

The state Department of Justice’s Office of Open Government has issued two sets of guidelines in recent weeks. The first, on March 16, advises public bodies to continue providing notices of meetings, while conducting them via conference calls or remote access that the public can join in on. It also says public bodies may need to accommodate people for whom remote access is difficult. 

In additional guidance on March 20, the office said meeting notices should provide instructions for how the public can attend remotely, and that bodies conducting a videoconference or internet-based meeting should consider creating an alternative dial-in option “so that lack of internet access is not a barrier to observing the meeting.”

The office urged meeting chairs to remind speakers to identify themselves for the benefit of those listening and to not speak over each other. And it said public bodies should “consider recording the meeting and posting it (online) as soon as practicable after the meeting concludes.”

This is all good advice, and there’s no question government officials need all the guidance they can get. 

But there’s something else public officials in Wisconsin deserve to hear at this time from the people they represent: thank you.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, the editor of The Progressive, is the group’s president.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: Public bodies find new ways to meet is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Early in his administration, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers was asked to produce a letter he’d gotten from departing Gov. Scott Walker, during the transition. He initially refused, claiming it was a “purely personal” communication outside of the reach of the state’s open records law.

When the Associated Press asked me for comment, in my role with the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, I unloaded, calling Evers’ decision “outrageous” and suggesting it should be challenged in court. “If this is how he intends to conduct himself in regard to the state’s open records law, he is going to have a rough time,” I was quoted as saying — accurately, as usual.

Within a few hours, Walker’s innocuous handwritten letter was released. All’s well that ends well. But the episode did raise questions about how committed Evers is to Wisconsin’s long and proud tradition of open government. 

In August, Evers was sued in federal court by the conservative MacIver Institute, which alleges that its news service was denied inclusion on a list of media outlets that receive notices from the governor’s office. It also says its reporters were barred from attending a news briefing on the state budget in the governor’s office in late February. 

Selectively excluding media you don’t like is a constitutional no-no; just ask President Donald Trump, who got his knuckles rapped when he tried doing it to CNN’s Jim Acosta. 

The governor’s spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, responded by saying that Evers “is committed to openness and transparency in state government.” But she did not deny that MacIver was excluded, and the Evers administration is apparently bent on using state resources to fight the lawsuit. (Already this year, state taxpayers have shelled out more than $300,000 due to failed efforts by Republican lawmakers to deny the public access to information.)

Evers was also taken to task in September by another conservative group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. It released a report noting that Evers scrapped a public website Walker had created to track compliance with records requests. It also probed whether state agencies were continuing to abide by shorter response timelines set forth in executive orders issued by Walker in 2016 and 2017.

While Baldauff disputed some of the report’s claims, she stated that the Evers team follows state public records law and Department of Justice guidance, “not executive orders issued by prior administrations.”

Yet the orders issued by Walker, who was by no means perfect when it came to open government, are important precisely because they go beyond what the law requires and the Attorney General advises. A governor “committed to openness and transparency” should not be ending initiatives that improve compliance.

Rather, Evers should be going further to promote government transparency. For starters, he could check out the “Legislative Wish List” that appears on the council’s website. Yes, these are things that involve legislative action, but the governor could work to make them happen.

One smart change would be to require public bodies who go into closed session to make a recording that can be checked by a judge if suspicions arise that the discussion went beyond what the law allows. And Wisconsin should definitely end the ability of legislators, alone among state and local officials, to destroy records at will. 

In fact, making a conspicuous commitment to expanding open government is one of the simplest and surest ways for politicians to score points with the people they represent. Gov. Evers, the ball’s in your court. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, editor of The Progressive, is the group’s president.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

Your Right to Know: Evers can do better on openness is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.