Category: Your Right To Know

Sandy Whisler was surprised to see her name appear on the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial page — not in a letter to the editor, which she sometimes writes, but in a Nov. 20 editorial. Whisler, a retired educator in Lake Mills, had emailed four state legislators urging them to hold hearings on proposed bills to […]

State Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, would like to change the way Wisconsin records campaign donations. He’s introduced a bill to raise the threshold for when donors to state and local campaigns must disclose their occupations from its current level of more than $100 to more than $500. The bill would also eliminate the requirement […]

State Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, is making a novel legal argument to dodge a public records request. It’s one that, carried to its logical extreme, could neuter Wisconsin’s Open Records Law. Vukmir is claiming legislative immunity from a June lawsuit filed by the liberal Center for Media and Democracy, which has alleged that she failed […]

State Rep. John Nygren and Sen. Alberta Darling might be the masterminds behind plans to legalize bounty hunters in Wisconsin, boot an investigative journalism center from the UW-Madison campus and add a credit for private school tuition to the state’s tax code. After all, the Republican co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee are the […]

On July 30, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on newly released emails between Scott Walker’s campaign staff and county aides in 2010, back when the future governor was Milwaukee county executive. One email was from Cindy Archer, then a top county aide, to Walker and his campaign staff, advising that “we may be responding too […]

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has requested that the state Legislature grant it an exemption from Wisconsin’s Open Records Law. The proposed legislation, if passed, would limit public access to university records and diminish independent scrutiny of the state’s flagship university. In pursuit of this exemption, UW-Madison officials have circulated proposed language, initially to a list […]

Back in 1990, when Milwaukee launched the nation’s first publicly funded voucher program, participating schools could enroll no more than 49 percent voucher students. These schools were considered private, because the majority of their students paid private tuition. Fast-forward to 2013. Now, more than half of Milwaukee’s 110 voucher schools have at least 95 percent […]

Bob Dreps, a veteran media law attorney, says law enforcement agencies across Wisconsin are “overreacting” to an Illinois federal court ruling by purging the names of drivers from public records. Police in Wisconsin have begun withholding the names of drivers in police reports in response to a 2012 case involving the village of Palatine, Ill. […]

Journalists and others often have cause to complain about the difficulties of prying public information from public officials. But sometimes there are reasons for optimism. Wisconsin has one of the nation’s best systems for accessing court records, through Wisconsin Circuit Court Access. The system has saved county clerks of court countless hours providing this information. […]

March 10-16 is national Sunshine Week, meant to call attention to the cause of open government. For the seventh year in a row, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is taking this opportunity to bestow its annual Openness Awards, or Opees. The council, which works to protect public access to meetings and records, is giving […]

A ruling last year by the Wisconsin Supreme Court involving the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel became the focus of attention Feb. 27, when a state Assembly committee held a public hearing on a bill, AB 26, that would drastically increase the cost of obtaining public records. The bill, if approved, would let custodians of public records […]

Let’s start with a stipulation: Not all of the inappropriate behavior that takes place in the Wisconsin state Legislature is committed by lawmakers. Some spectators, especially in the last two years, have also shown poor manners and bad form. People who shout “Liar!” from the gallery as the governor gives a State of the State […]

Stung by controversy last year over its allegedly light treatment of an environmental rule breaker, the state Department of Natural Resources is rewriting its enforcement procedures. Unfortunately, a draft of its plan calls for making the process less transparent. When dealing with polluters, the DNR’s policy is to apply progressively stricter actions until violations are […]

Recently the City of Burlington made some changes to its website, adding a feature it calls a “performance dashboard.” The online tool gives city residents a better look – much of it in real time – about what their government is doing. As the site explains, “Users can review monthly and yearly revenue, expenditures, per […]

Wisconsin’s Open Records Law asserts the public’s right to the “greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.” But the law’s reach has been tested in recent years by electronic communications that are easily sent — and just as easily deleted — from […]

Wisconsin, it’s said, had the nation’s first state law mandating public access to government records. It was passed in 1849, a year after Wisconsin entered the union. The law has undergone two subsequent reworkings, the last in 1981. But in truth, it never stops changing. Amendments are passed, practices change, and court rulings redefine the […]

Wisconsin state legislators are routinely deleting emails concerning their involvement with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), exploiting a loophole that exempts the Legislature from records retention rules that apply to all other state and local government officials. For more than a year, we at the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonpartisan watchdog […]