Category: Your Right To Know

Stung by controversy last year over its allegedly light treatment of an environmental rule breaker, the state Department of Natural Resources is rewriting its enforcement procedures. Unfortunately, a draft of its plan calls for making the process less transparent. When dealing with polluters, the DNR’s policy is to apply progressively stricter actions until violations are […]

Recently the City of Burlington made some changes to its website, adding a feature it calls a “performance dashboard.” The online tool gives city residents a better look – much of it in real time – about what their government is doing. As the site explains, “Users can review monthly and yearly revenue, expenditures, per […]

Wisconsin’s Open Records Law asserts the public’s right to the “greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.” But the law’s reach has been tested in recent years by electronic communications that are easily sent — and just as easily deleted — from […]

Wisconsin, it’s said, had the nation’s first state law mandating public access to government records. It was passed in 1849, a year after Wisconsin entered the union. The law has undergone two subsequent reworkings, the last in 1981. But in truth, it never stops changing. Amendments are passed, practices change, and court rulings redefine the […]

Wisconsin state legislators are routinely deleting emails concerning their involvement with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), exploiting a loophole that exempts the Legislature from records retention rules that apply to all other state and local government officials. For more than a year, we at the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonpartisan watchdog […]

I don’t know what it’s like to wear handcuffs, or to be threatened with arrest. I hope I never do. But that could happen, because carrying a camera puts a target on one’s back these days. Photography and videography, for news gathering or fun, are garnering lots of attention from police and other public officials. […]

Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court powerfully affirmed the state’s tradition of open and transparent government. In a unanimous ruling, the court affirmed the statutory limits the Legislature placed on public records fees and rejected the argument that requesters can be required to pay “each and every cost incurred by an authority.” The dispute between […]

Advocates of open government often quiz candidates for public office on their level of support for official transparency. The candidates, when asked, always tout their commitment. That doesn’t mean they always deliver. Both Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, have fielded many requests for public records. Indeed, since becoming […]

Wherever they may be on the political spectrum, most Wisconsinites would likely agree that the last year has been a lively one for open government issues in our state. Access issues — including Capitol access, records requests to university professors, arrests of photojournalists, and secret redistricting, to name a few — have regularly made the […]

For decades, a one-man toll booth operated at either the Martin Luther King Boulevard or West Washington Avenue entrances to Wisconsin’s Capitol. “Hey, what do you know?” Dick Wheeler, the dean of the Capitol press corps, would ask anyone entering or leaving. Wheeler, left hand holding his pipe, asked the question to the powerful and […]

It’s time once again for proponents of open government and the free flow of information to celebrate Sunshine Week. But this year, we’ll be doing it under a cloud. The March 11-17 commemoration is sponsored by the American Society of News Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and other groups. It occurs annually during the […]

As part of national Sunshine Week, March 11-17, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is bestowing its annual “Opee” Awards for openness in government. And Wisconsin state lawmakers have been tapped for both kinds of awards — good as well as bad. Six Opees are being given to eight individuals for 2011-12. The winners get […]

When members of the Columbia County Board committee that handles employment issues voted to go into closed session on Jan. 4, a reporter from the Daily Register newspaper in Portage and a local representative of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) objected. The two critics pointed out that under the controversial […]

Wisconsin citizens who obtain a simple permit now have the right to carry concealed weapons, in most public places. According to the governor and the majority of state legislators, that’s going to make the state a safer place. Unfortunately, though, we’ll never know for sure. That’s because the Legislature saw fit to exempt the permitting […]

Earlier this year, after Gov. Scott Walker was sued for the release of the thousands of emails he received at the height of the Capitol union protests, he posted a message on his web page: “Please know that any communications may be subject to release under Wisconsin’s public records law and that our policy is […]

No one deserves more credit for forging Wisconsin’s traditions of open government than the state Legislature.   From passing the nation’s first public records law in 1849, one year after Wisconsin became a state, to the last major update of our Open Records and Open Meetings Laws in the early 1980s, the Legislature has been […]

  On Sept. 19, Clinton Fillinger was arrested while doing his job — perhaps because he was doing it. The 68-year-old veteran photojournalist, employed by Milwaukee’s WITI Fox6, was filming a house fire from behind yellow police tape. A Milwaukee police sergeant approached and ordered Fillinger to move back, “all the way back.” Fillinger’s video […]

Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, is an insurance agent who sponsored an auto insurance bill in January, one of the first bills to pass the new Legislature. His opponents pegged him as the insurance industry’s best friend; Nygren said he was following the will of the people, many of whom had told him their auto insurance […]

Every ten years, legislative and congressional district boundaries are redrawn to account for population shifts reflected in the U.S. Census. It’s an important process, one that merits months of public deliberation and scrutiny. But that’s not what happens in Wisconsin. Our state’s redistricting process is handled almost completely out of public view by the party […]

Wisconsin has a long and proud history of open government. We have a strong Open Meetings Law which has served Wisconsin citizens well. That law, which requires public notice at least 24 hours before public meetings, applies to your library board, school board and city council – but it does not apply to the Wisconsin […]