Lawmakers must provide any documents they possess in response to an open records request. But they don’t need to provide documents they don’t have, and nothing compels them to keep documents.
Tag: Your Right to Know
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: AG’s office could do more on openness
Should enforcement of Wisconsin’s open records and open meetings laws depend on individual citizens having to file often costly and protracted lawsuits? That is one option prescribed under these laws, and those who prevail in such cases can recover attorney’s fees. But the laws also contain provisions intended to help people resolve disputes in a cheaper and less complicated way: Citizens can ask the state attorney general or county district attorney to sue a government authority, and any person can seek advice from the attorney general.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Walker must answer questions on emails
Apparently, many of the hundreds of open records requests being made of Walker’s county office were going to the Walker campaign for review. Clearly, these were all public records and the campaign should have had no involvement whatsoever in their review or release.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: OpenBook offers partial peek at state spending
In January, the state of Wisconsin launched a new websitewith a searchable database that lets the public see what state government spends on goods, services and other operating costs. OpenBook Wisconsin — openbook.wi.gov — debuted with more than 25 million records for expenses including real estate transactions, building projects, maintenance, office supplies, and rents. Records […]
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Lawmaker contacts shouldn’t be secret
There is a broader issue: the public has a right to know who is saying what to elected officials.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Don’t shield donor employer info
Grothman’s bill would raise the threshold for when donors to state and local campaigns must disclose their occupations and eliminate the requirement that the donor’s principal place of employment be disclosed.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Vukmir wrong on records law
State Sen. Leah Vukmir is making a novel legal argument to dodge a public records request — one that could neuter Wisconsin’s Open Records Law.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Pull back veil on budget tweakers
Doesn’t the public have a right to know who came up with these ideas? This would let voters hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box and look for potential conflicts.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Don’t delay on records requests
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 quickly” to open records requests regarding a county parking structure collapse that killed a 15-year-old boy. The requests were from the state Democratic Party and the campaign of Walker’s GOP primary opponent, which presumably wanted to use the tragedy to impugn Walker. That’s a pretty low motivation — Walker, in a draft statement, aptly called it “disgusting” — but the state’s Open Records Law does not allow a requester’s motives to be taken into account.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Voucher schools should be more open
Because voucher schools are still classified as “private,” they can — and do — ignore Wisconsin’s open records and meetings laws. It’s a double standard that
undermines transparency and shields information from parents and the public.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Cops wrong to shield driver data
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.
Posted inOpinion
Your Right to Know: Child-care, elder records easier to get
Two recent developments have eased access to state records on child care and senior care facilities — institutions serving highly vulnerable populations.