Author: Steve Lovejoy

Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of open government and the people’s right to know, got an unexpected and welcome beam of hope in mid-March when Gov. Scott Walker issued an executive order directing state agencies to speed up responses to public records requests and to track them to show their performance. “We go above and […]

Newspapers are usually reluctant to go to court. But sometimes we must, to protect our ability to report the facts readers need to assess the performance of their elected officials. That was the case in February 2012, when Racine’s Police and Fire Commission was picking a new city police chief. The search had narrowed to […]

Another attack on Wisconsin’s long commitment to open government and open records was launched recently when the Assembly Committee on Corrections and Courts took up a bill to limit online access to Wisconsin court information. State Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, is the lead sponsor of legislation that would force regular citizens to hoof it […]