{"id":1315178,"date":"2026-03-17T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/?p=1315178"},"modified":"2026-03-17T09:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T14:58:10","slug":"wisconsin-public-open-records-loophole-lawmakers-bill-republican-democrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/2026\/03\/wisconsin-public-open-records-loophole-lawmakers-bill-republican-democrat\/","title":{"rendered":"A loophole lets Wisconsin lawmakers delete public records","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/b><\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

All public employees in Wisconsin must retain records, per the state\u2019s open records law. Except one group. The ones who wrote that law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State legislators have exempted themselves from the retention portion of the law. Some want to change that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe public should not have to worry about legislators having secret conversations or deleting emails,\u201d said state Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, who is introducing a bill that would close this loophole despite the fact that the state Assembly adjourned last month for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anderson released the bill Monday because it is the start of Sunshine Week<\/a>, a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"People
Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, left, listens as the Wisconsin Assembly convenes during a floor session, Jan. 14, 2025, at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman \/ Wisconsin Watch)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In Wisconsin, state legislators must comply with a records request, but if they have destroyed the record, they have nothing to send.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cObviously, it\u2019s troubling,\u201d said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council<\/a>. \u201cIt allows legislators to make things go away that they would rather not see the light of day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told the Wisconsin Examiner<\/a> in 2021 that his office \u201cfrequently deletes emails during the normal course of business each day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy office does not delete records on principle, and we should make sure every elected official is held to that same standard,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, Gov. Tony Evers stepped in to close this loophole \u2013 his 2025 budget proposal<\/a> included a measure to \u201cremove the Legislature\u2019s exemption from open records law by requiring that records and correspondence of any member of the Legislature be included in a definition of a public record to provide greater transparency for the people of Wisconsin.\u201d The proposal also would have allocated funds and opened a full-time position with the Legislative Technology Services Bureau to carry out this new requirement. But the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee removed it from the final budget<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee, has introduced bills to close that exemption for state legislators multiple times and is doing so again in the Senate this week in tandem with Anderson.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A
Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson, D-Milwaukee, is photographed during a state Senate session on June 7, 2023, in the Wisconsin State Capitol building in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey \/ Wisconsin Watch)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Before his election to the state Senate in 2010, Larson served on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. As a public official, he had to maintain all his records there and assumed the same when he arrived in the Legislature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as his email inbox filled up and ran low on space, Larson said he was told by IT staff to simply delete old messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople often wonder why so many wildly popular policies go session after session without a vote or even a public hearing, while special interest slop rises to the top of the agenda,\u201d said Justin Bielinski, Larson\u2019s spokesman. \u201cThe Wisconsin Legislature\u2019s exemption from record retention requirements creates a perverse incentive to do the people\u2019s business in secret. If lawmakers aren\u2019t going to be responsive to their constituents\u2019 needs, the least we can do is allow people to find out who they are listening to, and whose voices they choose to ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larson\u2019s bills to close the loophole have been ignored by Republicans who control the Legislature, he said. The majority party generally pays little attention to bills from the minority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the fact the Wisconsin Legislature is even subject to the open records law, albeit with a caveat, makes it one of the more transparent states. Nearly a quarter of all states \u2014 12 in total \u2014 do not even allow records from the Legislature to be accessed by the public, according to a study from The Journal of Civic Information<\/a>. Congress has also excluded itself from open records requests under the Freedom of Information Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exemption for legislators here \u201ccompletely undermines Wisconsin\u2019s public records law and the ability for citizens to trust their Legislature,\u201d said David Cuillier, director of the University of Florida\u2019s Brechner Freedom of Information Project. \u201cIt\u2019s really quite bizarre and an outlier in the United States. The right thing to do is remove it and restore accountability and credibility to the institution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\tmore on open government<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Your\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Your Right to Know: Opees highlight good works, and bad<\/a><\/h3>\t\t\t\t\t\t

Two attempts to peel back the veil of secrecy over the proliferation of data centers, including one by Wisconsin Watch reporter Tom Kertscher, are being honored in this year\u2019s Openness in Government Awards, or Opees.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/article>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\t\n\n\n

The Badger Project<\/a> is an independent, reader-supported newsroom in Wisconsin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article<\/a> first appeared on The Badger Project<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats in the minority have repeatedly tried to close it, but the Republican majority has ignored their attempts. A new bill that would do that is likely DOA.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":622,"featured_media":1301026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-feature.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"gigafact_has_fact_brief":false,"gigafact_remote_fact_brief_post_id":0,"gigafact_remote_sync_timestamp":"","gigafact_remote_sync_status":"","gigafact_remote_sync_response":"","gigafact_has_been_published":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_newspack_byline_active":false,"_newspack_byline":"","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"beside","newspack_post_subtitle":"Democrats in the minority have repeatedly tried to close it, but the Republican majority has ignored their attempts. A new bill that would do that is likely DOA.","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[89],"tags":[3656,1074,267,378,19337,225],"partner":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"type-of-work":[],"coauthors":[3896,19451],"class_list":["post-1315178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-news","tag-open-government","tag-politics","tag-public-records","tag-the-badger-project","tag-wisconsin-legislature","entry"],"fact_brief":null,"apple_news_notices":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/2026\/03\/wisconsin-public-open-records-loophole-lawmakers-bill-republican-democrat\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"A loophole lets Wisconsin lawmakers delete public records","url":"http:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/2026\/03\/wisconsin-public-open-records-loophole-lawmakers-bill-republican-democrat\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/2026\/03\/wisconsin-public-open-records-loophole-lawmakers-bill-republican-democrat\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wisconsinwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/20241111-Wisconsin-State-Capitol-Timmerman-001.jpg?fit=140%2C93&quality=100&ssl=1","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wisconsinwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/20241111-Wisconsin-State-Capitol-Timmerman-001.jpg?fit=2500%2C1666&quality=100&ssl=1"},"articleSection":"Government","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Peter Cameron \/ The Badger Project"},{"@type":"Person","name":"Gus Pirlot \/ The Badger Project"}],"creator":["Peter Cameron \/ The Badger Project","Gus Pirlot \/ The Badger Project"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Wisconsin Watch","logo":"https:\/\/wisconsinwatch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/ww-logo-footer-1.png"},"keywords":["news","open government","politics","public records","the badger project","wisconsin legislature"],"dateCreated":"2026-03-17T11:00:00Z","datePublished":"2026-03-17T11:00:00Z","dateModified":"2026-03-17T14:58:10Z"},"rendered":"