This month, for the first time in 30 years, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is without Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. It is also without one of its most consistent advocates for transparency in government. 

Bradley served three 10-year terms on the court, the last of which expired July 31. During this time, she wrote nearly 600 opinions, including quite a few that contained important interpretations of Wisconsin’s open records and meetings laws.

In a 1996 opinion, Bradley rejected the argument that open records and meetings lawsuits had to be preceded by 120 days notice. Bradley, writing for a unanimous court, said the laws require “timely access to the affairs of government.” 

In 2007, Bradley’s majority opinion in Buswell v. Tomah Area School District strengthened the public notice requirements of the state’s open meetings law. That case required meeting notices to be more specific about the subject matter of topics to be discussed, to better inform the public. 

In another majority opinion in 2008, Bradley provided some clarity as to when “quasi-governmental corporations” are subject to the open meetings law. In that case, the Beaver Dam city economic development office had closed, then was immediately replaced by a private corporation that continued to use city offices and receive tax dollars. Bradley’s opinion concluded that because the corporation still resembled the government in function, purpose and effect, it had to follow the laws.

Not every opinion written by Bradley was for the majority. In 2017, she dissented from a decision to exempt from disclosure unredacted immigration detainer forms sent by the Milwaukee County jail to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her opinion methodically rejected the county’s arguments in favor of redaction, arguing that “continuous ‘chipping away’ has substantially gutted Wisconsin’s commitment to open government.” 

Just one year later, Bradley dissented again, this time from an opinion that denied a public union’s request for certification forms. “The unfounded speculation that the records might be used for improper purposes,” she wrote, “does not outweigh the strong public interest in opening the records to inspection.”

Regardless of whether Bradley wrote a majority, dissenting or concurring opinion, she always emphasized the strong public policy in favor of open government set forth in Wisconsin’s open records and open meetings laws. And she condemned decisions that paid only “lip service” to these principles, calling them “all hat and no cattle.” 

Bradley even had occasion to apply open government principles to the Wisconsin Supreme Court itself. In 2012, she opposed its 4-3 decision to close some of the court’s rules and operations conferences to the public. As reported by Wisconsin Watch at the time, Bradley questioned the change, asking, “What is the good public policy reason to exclude the public from this process? I can’t think of any.” 

In 2017, Bradley was one of two justices who voted against closing all such conferences. (Fortunately, in 2023, a newly constituted court decided to reopen its conferences, with Bradley in the majority.)

Bradley told Wisconsin Lawyer magazine that she intends to stay engaged with organizations that support law and civics education. Her dedication to open government in these endeavors should serve her well, as it has the citizens of Wisconsin for three decades.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison. Heather Kuebel contributed research to this column.

Your Right to Know: Ann Walsh Bradley and the cause of 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.

You ask for a record from your local government, you get it. You want to attend a meeting of a public body, you can walk right in.

Much of the time, it’s that simple. Wisconsin’s open records law entitles citizens to most records regarding the affairs of government, and its open meetings law creates a default presumption that all governmental meetings are open. 

But what happens when things get complicated? Say your request for records is denied or delayed, or you are asked to pay exorbitant fees. What if you arrive at the meeting only to be told the discussion on the topic you’re interested in is closed?

Fortunately, Wisconsin citizens seeking to understand the open records and meetings laws have at their fingertips a valuable resource: the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Public Records and Open Meetings compliance guides.

These guides have been maintained across the administrations of several Wisconsin attorneys general, updated every few years. In May, for the first time since 2019, the guides were updated again, under Attorney General Josh Kaul. 

That’s good news because the law as set down in statutes and case law has in some cases changed since 2019. So has the technology that government agencies use to keep records and store information. 

The guides for records and meetings — 99 and 50 pages, respectively — provide basic information, from what is a “record” to the definition of a “governmental body” subject to the open meetings law. They include citations to statutes and case law, as well as links to where readers can access the source documents for themselves.

But the guides go further. For example, the public records guide explains when records requests can be denied, whether and how people discussed in records must be notified before release, and special issues related to electronic records, fees and enforcement. 

The open meetings guide delves into how governmental entities must give notice of upcoming meetings, when and how they can go into closed session, and the requirement that meetings be accessible to members of the public. It also includes a verified open meetings complaint form that can be filed with the district attorney, which is the first step in seeking enforcement of an open meetings violation.

Do the guides answer every question? No. The laws are continually being amended by legislation and tested by litigation, and the courts have not sorted out every problem area. But the guides do serve to answer a lot of questions, and they assist the attorney general in his or her statutory duty to interpret these laws. 

Other resources are available on the department’s website, courtesy of its Office of Open Government. Under a unique feature of Wisconsin law, citizens can also seek advice from the AG’s office and most of the time receive a written reply. You can contact the office by phone, email or letter. 

Could the attorney general do more to strengthen these laws? Certainly. No attorney general has filed an enforcement case since approximately 2006, and it sometimes takes months or even years to get responses to requests for interpretation or enforcement.

That is why it is so valuable to have the public records and open meetings compliance guides, which discuss the laws and their interpretation in great detail. 

So before throwing up your hands when your request is denied or your meeting is closed, check out the compliance guides. They might just have the answers you’re looking for.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison.

Your Right to Know: Guides help public navigate openness laws 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.

On Oct. 9, 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held a lively, 35-minute discussion on whether to allow the deletion of certain eviction records from Wisconsin’s online court records system. I’ll get to that topic in a moment; what’s remarkable is that we were able to witness this discussion at all.

In 2012, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to close its administrative conferences.  These are conferences where the court considers changes to rules that affect the court system, procedures used in civil and criminal matters, and ethics rules for attorneys and judges.  

Arguing in favor of closing the conferences, then-Justice Patience Roggensack opined that to “sit out here in public and philosophize … is really not the best use of our time,” as quoted by Wisconsin Watch.

The late Justice Patrick Crooks countered, “I think it’s vitally important that the public be able to see what we do and how we do it. . . . This would be a major mistake, to close what has been open.”

In the end, the justices voted to close the court’s administrative conferences on a vote of 4-3.  But this August, on another 4-3 vote, the court’s newly constituted majority decided to again make these conferences open to the public. (Administrative conferences do not include deliberations on cases, which are not and have not been open.)

This was a welcome change. As intimated by Justice Crooks, open administrative conferences give the public insight into the work of the court and the basis for its decisions on rules petitions. 

That was apparent during the court’s open discussion of the rule change proposed by tenants rights advocates to shorten the record retention period for court records of evictions where no money judgment is entered from 20 years to one year. (Not only was the meeting in open session, but it was streamed on WisconsinEye and is still available for viewing.)

The advocates said the change was needed to make rental housing more available because landlords frequently rely on online court systems when deciding whether to lease an apartment or other housing. They also noted that the impact of the current retention rule disproportionately affected Black and Latino households.

The court also heard from opponents of the change, including the Apartment Association of Southeastern Wisconsin. In their discussion, court members considered the administrative burden to clerks and the court system that the change would cause, citing their own experiences, as well as the impacts to transparency and access to records in general.

Reasonable minds can disagree on the impacts of the change to the eviction record rule. But it was refreshing to see the court’s members consider the competing issues and interact with one another on a matter of substance. 

Open administrative conferences may also result in better decision-making. Chief Justice Annette Ziegler joked at the beginning of the meeting that if the group were in closed conference, the meeting may “take about five minutes,” which was apparently the norm. In the open session on the eviction record change, the court’s members had a much longer and more thoughtful discussion.    

Another open conference on an administrative petition is scheduled for Dec. 11, 2023.  This time, the issue under discussion is the proper standard for when appellate courts can stay a lower court decision pending appeal.

For just the second time in more than 10 years, the public will be welcome to sit in.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison, Wisconsin.

Your Right to Know: Reopening court discussions was a good idea 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.

As ever, 2022 was a roller coaster year for open government.  

The Wisconsin Supreme Court made it harder for requesters to recover attorneys’ fees for open records suits, but also issued a ruling to prevent outsiders from blocking responses to open records requests

Elections officials struggled under the weight of open records requests in the 2022 election season, but information about the Wisconsin Assembly’s investigation into the 2020 election was finally made public.  

So what can Wisconsin officials do better in 2023? Plenty. 

First, the Wisconsin legislature should pass a fix to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s opinion in Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha, which set a higher bar for requesters to recover their attorneys fees when they have to sue to get records.  

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council issued a statement when the decision was issued, calling it a “body blow to the state’s traditions of open government” and expressing concern that it could deter lawsuits and lead to more delays in providing records.

A conservative law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, agreed. The law firm issued a policy brief proposing different solutions to the decision, including one similar to the fix made by Congress to the federal Freedom of Information Act. We hope the legislature and governor’s office pay attention.

Second, some agencies are experiencing backlogs in providing responses to records requests, in part due to staffing and funding challenges. Agencies should request more funding to fulfill their open records duties in the next budget process, and the legislature should give it to them. Doing so recognizes the open records law’s command that “providing persons with [government] information is declared to be . . . an integral part of the routine duties of officers and employees.”

This includes the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office, charged with enforcing and providing advice to the public about the state’s openness laws, and with fulfilling records requests made to the state Department of Justice. In the runup to the November 2022 election, both attorney general candidates said additional resources would help the office meet its open government obligations. 

Now that the election is settled, Attorney General Josh Kaul should work to make sure these resources are requested, obtained and utilized. He should also consider separating the office’s advice-giving and records-fulfilling functions, so delays in one do not bog down the other.  

Third, local governments, like agencies, can and should work on reducing the time it takes to respond to records requests and reduce or even waive fees for locating and producing records.  To that end, the legislature should take up Gov. Tony Evers’ proposal to raise location fee thresholds from $50 — set in the early 1980s — to $150.

Local governments could also post more records online proactively, and take steps to ensure that exemptions that allow closed meeting sessions are not overused.

All levels of government in Wisconsin should resolve to have a sunny 2023.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison, Wisconsin. She also is the counsel for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Your Right to Know: Here’s to a more transparent 2023 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.

Wisconsin’s open records law is most often used by requesters seeking to obtain records from a government agency.  But occasionally it works in reverse, allowing someone to block the release of records to a requester.  

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has recently affirmed important limits on such efforts. Ironically, it was the court that created the opportunity in the first place.

Up until 1996, the notion that someone could prevent a records custodian from fulfilling someone else’s records request was not recognized in Wisconsin law. But that year, the court created a private right of action to seek the denial of records access in a case, Woznicki v. Erickson, concerning a school district employee accused of improper contact with a minor.

Public employees and others were given a pre-release right to review and attempt to suppress certain records. But for years afterwards, in the words of former Freedom of Information Council President Jeff Hovind, “public record keepers struggled with the hows, whos, whens, and whys of this new process.” Many records were now being released only after “a long, often expensive legal jangle.” 

The Wisconsin Legislature created a special committee to study the issue and make recommendations. That led to the bipartisan passage in 2003 of what was known as the “Woznicki Fix.” 

It limited the ability of non-requesters to review records before they were released to a few narrow categories of people: public employees who were the subject of a disciplinary investigation, persons named in records created by private employers, and persons named in records obtained through subpoena and search warrant. And it set strict timelines, so that disputes could be quickly resolved and any responsive records made available as soon as possible.

Problem solved, right? Wrong.

In 2020, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce brought a case that, had it succeeded, would have made the Woznicki Fix almost meaningless and the right to block the release of public records expansive.

Alerted that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services intended to release data on certain businesses with two or more COVID-19 cases, WMC and two other trade groups sued to block release under a different law: Wisconsin’s declaratory judgments act.  

Initially, WMC was successful. It convinced a circuit court to put a stay on the release of records while the case was litigated.

But this summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the Legislature had “in no uncertain terms” limited the right to review and block release of records. It concluded that WMC’s claim was barred by the statute. The group has since filed a motion for reconsideration, which remains pending.

While WMC lost the case, it did succeed in blocking the release of these records for nearly two years, until long after this information was useful from a news-gathering or public health point of view.

And it demonstrated that battles transparency advocates think they have won sometimes have to be fought again. Let’s hope that this time, the win sticks. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the Council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison, Wisconsin. She filed an amicus brief in this case on behalf of the Council and other organizations.

Your Right to Know: Outsiders can’t block records access 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 states, including Wisconsin, have public records laws. But that doesn’t mean requesters always get the records they seek, or even that the laws are followed.

What provisions in a state’s laws are most associated with compliance?

The answer may surprise you. It’s not the strength of a law’s penalty provisions or whether a state has an ombudsman office to mediate records disputes (Wisconsin does not).  

Instead, a 2019 study by University of Arizona journalism professor David Cullier found a significant correlation between compliance and laws that “mandate judges to impose attorney fees” to requesters deemed to have been wrongly denied access to records.  

That’s why a recent Wisconsin court of appeals decision, in a case known as Meinecke v. Thyes, is good news. It held that if a court orders the release of records—even if it’s only some of the records—the requester has “prevailed” in substantial part and is thus entitled to attorney fees. While Wisconsin’s open records law has a mandatory fee-shifting provision, this case for the first time established that getting an order for records was sufficient to trigger it.

At issue was a village trustee’s request for five categories of records from the village she served.  A circuit court found the village had unlawfully withheld some of the records and ordered them released, but then denied the trustee’s request for attorney fees because the trustee did not obtain access to all the records she sought and that village officials did not act with “wanton disregard” for the law, among other considerations.

That ruling was appealed, with the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Wisconsin Broadcasters Association filing a “friend of the court” brief in favor of the trustee.  (My law firm authored the brief.)

The appeals court ruled that the trustee was entitled to fee recovery, citing the open records law’s statement that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and its direction that the law be liberally construed in favor of public access. 

Laws that allow requesters to recover attorneys fees have always been important to ensuring access to information. For example, they allow people who could not otherwise afford  an attorney to hire one on a contingent-fee basis to bring an open records case. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is also considering a different attorney fees case this term. It will decide whether requesters can get attorney fees when an agency voluntarily produces records after a suit is filed, if the initial denial was unlawful.  

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council joined with four other organizations in filing a “friend-of-the-court” brief urging a “yes” answer to this question.

A stronger fee recovery standard means a government that is less willing to test the limits of its ability to withhold records. As Cullier pointed out, “Certainly, agencies might not worry about a $1,000 fine or other slap on the wrist, but it appears they pay attention to paying tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to a successful plaintiff’s attorney, not to mention the bad publicity that would create for the agency.”

The court of appeals decision that getting a court order directing the release of records should entitle a requester to fees is a welcome clarification to Wisconsin’s records law.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg, an attorney at Pines Bach law firm in Madison, is the group’s vice president. She also is legal counsel to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Your Right to Know: Fee recovery is key to 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.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Just shy of two years ago, this column explored the heightened importance of open government when public health is at risk. Multiple examples showed the government was not sharing timely information with the public, or even other branches of government, on issues such as clean drinking water and chronic wasting disease.  

Some progress may be on the horizon, however. A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced a bill, AB 700, which would require the state Department of Natural Resources to notify counties within seven days when a water discharge permit-holder has violated groundwater quality standards. It also directs the department to create a notification system for other interested parties, such as residents, regarding the same violations.

Known as the Water Pollution Notification Act, the bill aims to prevent what happened in La Crosse in 2016. Then, La Crosse County health officials worked in vain for months to get information from the DNR about potential groundwater pollution from a local Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). It turned out that pollution had been ongoing for years.

The bill’s co-author, Rep. Jill Billings, D-La Crosse, worked with county and DNR officials to draft the bill. “The intent of this legislation is not to go after farmers,” Billings told Wisconsin Public Radio. It merely ensures that people who live near problem wells be notified “so that they can test their wells and make sure that they have clean water.”

This makes sense, and it is in keeping with the ideal of maximum transparency. As one county official expressed, “We make decisions based upon the best information that we have available at any point. So there cannot be a decision made to notify the public if we’re not aware of a problem.”

The bill is not limited to farm contamination; it would require disclosure of contaminants from industrial or other sources as well. The bill is co-authored by Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, whose district has experienced groundwater pollution from a class of contaminants called PFAS, and who has criticized withholding information about groundwater pollution.

A similar bill was proposed in early 2018 but failed to pass. Let’s hope this bipartisan effort fares better in 2020.

Sadly, not everyone agrees that sharing information about groundwater contamination is a good idea. Officials in Lafayette County were roundly criticized in November for proposing to prosecute media and discipline board members who reported results from a three-county groundwater study in a manner not favored by county officials. While that sweeping proposal did not pass, a scaled-back version received approval from a county committee, and some county officials still supported releasing results only to local media.

Scientists working on the study pushed back against the county proposal. 

“We are public employees and our work is public work,” said state geologist Ken Bradbury. “We cannot choose to release some data to some parties and not to others.”

That’s the spirit. Information about clean drinking water and clean air is of fundamental importance to the public. That alone is reason for proper communication about testing results, instead of trying to withhold studies that taxpayers are funding.

We hope policy makers resolve in 2020 to bring additional transparency to matters of public health.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg, an attorney at Pines Bach law firm in Madison, is the group’s co-vice president.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.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: Pollution records must be open 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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As Justice Shirley Abrahamson ends her tenure on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, after 43 years and more than 1,300 authored opinions, she leaves a rich legacy of legal scholarship, importantly including her support for government transparency.

While on the court, Abrahamson faithfully applied the presumption in favor of public access in the open records and meetings laws. She authored or joined dozens of opinions affirming the law’s stated policy that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts” of government officers and employees.

For example, she wrote the majority opinion in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel v. City of Milwaukee, a 2012 ruling that barred records custodians from charging requesters for the cost to redact (black out) records. Not only were such charges prohibited by statute, Abrahamson said, but “increasing the costs of public records requests for a requester may inhibit access to public records and, in some instances, render the records inaccessible.”

Abrahamson’s opinions also recognized Wisconsin’s strong tradition of open government. In a 2010 case, she quipped, “If Wisconsin were not known as the Dairy State it could be known, and rightfully so, as the Sunshine State.”

Abrahamson frequently dissented from opinions that limited access. She was a strong critic of two opinions in the late 1990s that permitted individuals identified in records to seek to block disclosure. She wrote: “I dissent because the majority and concurring opinions rewrite the open records law, do away with the legislatively created ‘presumption of complete public access’ to public records and severely damage the core function of the open records law.”

The Legislature narrowed the court-created loophole a few years later.

Abrahamson also advocated for transparency within the Supreme Court itself. In 2012, she opposed its 4-3 decision to close some of the court’s rules and operations conferences to the public. In 2017, she was in the 5-2 minority that closed all such conferences.

In addition, Abrahamson can take some credit for the existence of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, the statewide group on which I serve.

In 1977, a joint committee of the media and the State Bar was created to study openness in legal venues. The committee invited Abrahamson, then a newly appointed member of the state Supreme Court, as its inaugural speaker. Council founding member Dave Zwiefel recalls her advising that if openness in Wisconsin was to be protected and improved, the press needed to become better organized and more proactive.

Soon after, Wisconsin news organizations began meetings that led to the council’s creation in October 1978. Its first major accomplishment was to work with the state Supreme Court to make Wisconsin one of the first states to allow cameras in the courtroom.

Says Zwiefel, “I credit Shirley for being the catalyst [of] what became a new era for open government in Wisconsin and remains highly effective to this very day.”

Fittingly, Abrahamson spoke at the Council’s 30th anniversary event in 2009. She concluded her remarks with a quotation from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

As Abrahamson concludes her time on the bench, she might be known, and rightfully so, as the Sunshine Justice.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg, an attorney at Pines Bach law firm in Madison, is the group’s co-vice president. Westerberg is also legal counsel of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

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: Abrahamson let the sunshine in 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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Wisconsin’s open government laws were meant to strengthen our democracy by ensuring an informed electorate. But, sometimes, transparency is about more than democracy—it is about human health, with serious consequences when transparency fails.

Earlier this year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the city of Milwaukee had failed to alert thousands of families whose children had blood tests indicating elevated lead levels. Lead from water pipes and old paint is a significant public health risk in Milwaukee and elsewhere, causing cognitive damage and other problems.

It later emerged that officials in Milwaukee had imposed a gag order on health department employees. It barred them from having contacts with elected officials without prior approval. Said one alder, “This policy is a disgrace and it likely restricted workers from coming forward sooner.” The policy has since been rescinded.

Sometimes, requests for health information and data are simply stonewalled, for no good reason. The Milwaukee Public School district failed to respond for weeks to questions about whether it tested drinking water fountains for lead. It later reported that 183 fountains had high lead levels.

And when La Crosse County learned about high levels of nitrate in drinking water wells near a large hog operation, it worked for months to get groundwater data from the Department of Natural Resources. Eventually, the county had to file open records requests, which took months to fulfill.

“If the state is keeping data on groundwater, why isn’t it sharing it willingly with its own counties, its own people, in the spirit of public health?” asked the La Crosse Tribune in an exasperated editorial. “County health officials shouldn’t be required to become experts on public-records law in order to find out whether there’s a health hazard in their own county.”

The DNR also came under fire last year for “muzzling” its scientists, preventing them from providing expert input on natural resource and other issues. Since 2011, DNR employees do not regularly testify at legislative hearings on matters within the agency’s purview.

Last year, a DNR scientist had to testify on his own time at a legislative hearing to roll back air-pollution standards. Other legislation, like a bill changing rules for managing chronic wasting disease in the state’s deer herd, had no DNR input at all.

Many public employees take seriously their duty to inform decision-makers and the public about ways to prevent health problems and lower risk. Yet some are unjustly penalized for reporting problems and sharing information. Multiple workers at the Veterans Administration hospital in Tomah, Wisconsin, were retaliated against for reporting the overprescription of opioids and other problems.

Government agencies should always be cognizant of their duties under transparency laws. But these duties gain extra import when government holds information that can help protect public health and safety.

Taxpayers pay for the expertise of government scientists and the data they collect and generate. While some discretion may be warranted in how it is released, this information should be accessible to the public. No gag order, stonewall, or muzzle should prevent that.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg, an attorney at Pines Bach law firm in Madison, is the group’s co-vice president.

Your Right to Know: Policies put public health at risk 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.

The Wisconsin Constitution states that “the doors of each house” of the state Legislature “shall be kept open,” except on rare occasions. But even with the doors open, the public may not know what’s going on.

A growing trend threatens transparency — and good government — in Wisconsin. Some legislative committees are using “mail ballots” to vote, instead of voting during public meetings.

Important measures have passed out of committee this way. The Assembly Committee on Organization used mail ballots in 2015 to increase lawmakers’ per diem payments, and in 2013 to lift the ban on campaign fundraising during the budget-writing process.

In the Senate, which more broadly permits the practice, mail ballots recently authorized controversial high-capacity well legislation and a recovery charter school contract.

Meetings where votes are cast in person can be attended by the public or viewed on WisconsinEye. By avoiding this process, mail ballots make it harder for citizens to understand what their elected representatives are voting on and why.

This use of mail ballots has predictable impacts on the public’s faith in government. One critic of the well-legislation vote called this avoidance of public discussion “just another example of concealing the effects of the legislation they’re enacting.”

And Brett Healy of the conservative MacIver Institute told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2013, “If it’s being used by politicians to avoid questions from the public or the press, that’s a concern for everyone in Wisconsin.”

Mail ballots lack the notice that usually precedes an in-person vote — posting in three places at least 24 hours in advance, as well as on the Legislature’s website.

In both 2017 and 2013, legislative committees voted by mail ballot to hire law firms to defend the state’s redistricting maps in court. Some reporters were notified by the Assembly, and the Senate committee posted a single notice in a quiet Capitol hallway. The rest of us were left out of the loop.

The use of mail ballots also deprives legislators of opportunities to suggest amendments. “It’s basically take it or leave it,” said state Senator Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, in 2013. “There’s no room for debate.” He and other legislators had to vote on hiring the law firm for the redistricting dispute without knowing critical details, like the firm’s billing rate.

Republican legislative leaders note that Democrats used mail ballots when they controlled the Senate in 2009, and to take some votes when they fled the state during the 2011 Act 10 battles.

But a bad idea doesn’t get any better because someone has had that idea before. Transparency suffers either way. In 2005, a state court panned the use of mail ballots in an open meetings law case, saying they rendered “the work of government all but invisible.”

Legal questions aside, citizens shouldn’t have to wait for future courts to limit or fix this problem. Legislators should hear loud and clear that votes should be taken in person, with all the deliberation, input, and process that entails. Otherwise, democracy is reduced to just shuffling paper.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg, an attorney at Pines Bach law firm in Madison, is the group’s co-vice president.

Your Right to Know: Mail ballots are an affront to 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.

Wisconsin’s third branch of government is critical to open government. This year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear three cases involving Wisconsin’s open records law, and could make important decisions involving access to the courts.

The court’s docket starts with a case about whether videos of law enforcement training sessions must be released to the public. The videos were requested from then-Waukesha District Attorney Brad Schimel by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin during the race for attorney general, which Schimel later won.

Lower courts rejected Department of Justice arguments that disclosing the videos would educate criminals about law enforcement practices and harm crime victims, because the information was already in the public sphere and did not identify victims.

The appeals court ruled that the DOJ “neither made the exceptional case required to shield public records from public view … nor overcame the presumption of complete public access to public records.” But the justices have agreed to take another look.

In another politically tinged case, the court will review whether Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke can black out information on federal forms used to request that arrested aliens be detained after state custody ends. An immigration rights group sued over these redactions, and lower courts agreed the records should be fully available.

“[I]f it’s helping the public to identify that law enforcement … is violating federal or state law, that’s a pretty strong argument on behalf of [releasing the records],” said the circuit court.

Prior court rulings have recognized the importance of transparency in law enforcement. Let’s hope that view continues to prevail in Wisconsin.

Finally, the court will look at how much information must be revealed when the Department of Justice runs criminal background checks. A Milwaukee man whose name was used as an alias by a convicted criminal sued to block the release of records he said falsely suggested he was a criminal, impairing his employment and housing opportunities.

An appellate court ruled that the open records law did not allow such a claim. But one concurring judge suggested that the Department of Justice’s response was incomplete, because it did not also release an “innocence letter” clearing the plaintiff of the identified crimes. This is a simple fix that is more transparent for all concerned.

The high court also has a role in administering the court system, and in this capacity has encouraged the State Bar of Wisconsin to re-submit a 2009 petition to allow records of certain charges and convictions to be expunged, or blocked from release. The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council believes these records should remain public.

In recent months, the court has itself stirred concerns by allowing parties in the lingering John Doe case to file entire motions, briefs and other documents under seal; but it rejected an effort by a state district attorney to block the release of records of a disciplinary probe.

The court, which begins its term next month, includes two new justices, representing a fresh chance to reaffirm the public’s right to know.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the group’s co-vice president. She also serves as legal counsel to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.