Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council

Last March, the Wisconsin Examiner asked the Black River Falls Police Department to search for emails regarding the death of a missing Indigenous man. The department said it would process the request but the news outlet would have to pay $4,400. That’s the amount the city’s IT vendor, Tech Pros, quoted to perform the search. […]

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 […]

The bill moved with lightning speed. It was introduced last December, passed the state Senate in January and the Assembly in February, and was signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers in March. 2023 Wisconsin Act 253 allows police and corrections officials to charge some requesters of video and audio recordings for the cost of […]

Imagine I sue a school district for refusing to provide copies of records. Do I have to prove I’m entitled to them, or does the district have to prove it can withhold them? That’s a question the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, along with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, […]

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will soon hear a case involving records related to the voting rights of mentally incompetent people. No matter which side wins, the public has in some ways already lost. That’s because while the case pits the public’s right to scrutinize voter eligibility against the rights of voters to protect their own […]

A horrific scene played out in February in an apartment complex in Middleton, a Madison suburb. A woman and her two young children had died. The tight-knit community mourned for this family as its members asked: How could this happen? Several days after the shootings, Middleton police released a statement saying the mother had killed […]

You’ve already paid for them. They’re yours. But if you want to see the public records that show what your government is doing, some state lawmakers want you to pay again — this time, for redactions. That’s right. They want you to pay more to get less. Currently, the state’s Open Records Law allows public […]

Law enforcement officers in Winnebago County shot three people in 2023, one fatally. And while we know the names of the people shot, the identities of those who pulled the trigger remain secret. The fatal shooting, on Aug. 2, was of an armed 37-year-old man at a Neenah gas station by an Outagamie County sheriff’s […]

About a year ago, Simon Mehring came home from a high school journalism conference with an idea. Mehring, now a junior at Stoughton High School, had learned about an Illinois law that protects student media from censorship. He also found out that Wisconsin doesn’t have such a law. So, armed with model legislation from the […]

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 […]

In mid-August, in my role as a press advocate, I received a call from the owner of a small, vibrant, online community newspaper who was worried about publishing a story that reflected poorly on a local business. The paper had checked and rechecked its facts, and gave the business repeated opportunities to comment. But still, […]

As part of doing business, government agencies often maintain contact lists or distribution lists. These days those are typically email addresses, but they also can contain physical addresses or even phone numbers. Your state legislator probably has a list of email addresses to send newsletters. Your local governmental units might have multiple lists for different […]

In recent years, public schools in Wisconsin and across the country have come under intense scrutiny. At issue are some of the most politically engaging, high-stakes issues of our time: what we teach children about race, gender and identity; how we police the line between free speech and anti-discrimination law; and the role of parents […]