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March: Openness group honors highs and lows

Thursday, 11 March 2010 19:50 Bill Lueders
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Your Right to Know/ Bill Lueders
Openness group honors highs and lows

As part of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 14-20, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is bestowing its fourth annual Opee Awards to people and institutions that have had an impact on open government in Wisconsin.
    This was an usually busy year for openness issues. The state Supreme Court ruled that state agencies could not enter into agreements to keep secret the names of public employees. The Legislature has made progress toward passing a law to protect the ability of media to obtain information from confidential sources. And smaller clashes have helped reaffirm the obligations of public officials to conduct the public’s business in, well, public.
    The winners are:

Political Openness Advocate of the Year (the “Popee”): J.B. Van Hollen.  Wisconsin’s Attorney General has continued to host tutorials throughout the state on Wisconsin’s openness laws and he and others in his office have written strong letters on the obligations of public officials under these laws, including calls for openness in e-mail meetings and social media. The office has also vigorously defended Wisconsin’s online state court records system against increasing attack.

Citizen Openness Advocate of the Year (the “Copee”): Daniel O. Wilson. This Weyauwega resident has twice won lawsuits against the Weyauwega-Fremont Board of Education over its apparent wanton disregard of openness laws. In a case decided this April, the board (which has now lost four such lawsuits in three years) spent $120,000 in taxpayer dollars on its defense and had to reimburse Wilson for $27,000 in legal fees. Let’s hope it got the message this time. If not, Wilson may need to issue another reminder.

Media Openness Advocate(s) of the Year (the “Mopee”): Tie: The UWM Post and the Green Bay Press Gazette. The UW-Milwaukee student paper asked for and got an informal opinion from Van Hollen advising that student governments are usually subject to the state’s open meetings law and successfully sued the university over its efforts to conceal the names of students who served on a campus committee. The Press Gazette, meanwhile, sued to force the city to release the invoices of law firms doing city work, and thus found that the city had failed to disclose nearly a half-million dollars in recent legal costs.

Open Records Scoop of the Year (the “Scoopee”): Tony Galli. The veteran reporter for WKOW Ch. 27 in Madison breaks a lot of stories by making prodigious use of the state’s open records laws. This year he used public records to confirm that a controversial judicial pick was passed up as a finalist by a nominating committee. And he was the first to obtain dramatic video of state Rep. Fred Clark running a red light and hitting a bicyclist.

No Friend of Openness Award (the “Nopee”): The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA). The association, which runs high school athletic events, is aggressively fighting legislation that would compel it to obey the same openness laws as schools. It’s also sued two newspapers and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association for daring to offer a live stream of a high school football game, which it considers its exclusive purview. Wisconsin to WIAA, with regard to openness: Try it, you’ll like it.

Dumbest Open Government Decision (the “Dopee”): Wisconsin Department of Corrections. When The Associated Press asked for the video of a cell extraction that led to a successful inmate lawsuit, the DOC refused, claiming it would expose the limitations of its surveillance camera system. The problem with this explanation is that the video was in this case taken by a hand-held camera. The AP sued, in the end getting the video and $5,000 to cover its legal fees. The DOC got egg on its face, and this award.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), dedicated to open meetings and open records. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 11 March 2010 20:01 )
 

March: Guest column for Sunshine Week

By J.B. Van Hollen Your Right to Know - 2010 Columns
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Guest column for Sunshine week by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen

March 14-20 is Sunshine Week.  It is important to recognize this national initiative which focuses attention on the importance of open government and the public’s right to know. 

Citizen oversight of the workings of government is essential to democratic government and our confidence in it.  Citizen access to public records and meetings of governmental bodies is a vital aspect of this principle.  As the state’s chief law enforcement officer, I am deeply committed to promoting compliance with Wisconsin’s open meetings and public records laws. 

Educating the public and public employees is the best way to enforce these laws.  That is why since I’ve been Attorney General, the Department of Justice has committed increased resources to helping civic leaders, government employees and the public better understand their rights and responsibilities.

In 2007 and 2008, the Department hosted eleven free seminars across the state to promote public awareness of and compliance with the open meetings and public records laws. Over one thousand five hundred citizens and public officials registered for the seminars, more than twice the attendance from the previous two year period. In 2009 the Department hosted 19 free seminars across the state training over 1,800 citizens. For the first time the Department offered many of these training opportunities via videoconferencing. Recently, the Department hosted the first ever specialized training session for members of Wisconsin’s law enforcement community on Wisconsin’s Public Records laws. The specialized training was geared specifically to the context of law enforcement. Two hundred and sixty-eight law enforcement professionals participated in this specialized training.

As well, our office provides informative compliance guides on the open meetings and public records laws.  The publications answer recurring questions of citizens and public employees alike and are posted on the Department’s website to download, copy, and share.

Every day the Department helps people seeking to understand their rights and obligations under the open meetings and public records laws.  This is the one area where, by statute, the Department is authorized to give legal advice to citizens. Since I became Attorney General, our office has answered thousands of requests for advice and guidance.  Department attorneys assisting in this way report increased compliance as a direct result.

As principal statewide interpreter of the open meetings and public records laws, I represent the state’s interest in the orderly and proper development of the open meetings and public records laws.  In State ex rel. Buswell v. Tomah Area School District, the Department went before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and urged reversal of a bright-line rule that permitted an almost unlimited degree of generality when giving notice of the subject matter of a meeting.  The court adopted the Department’s approach.  As a result, Wisconsin citizens are entitled to receive more meaningful notice than was required under previously decided case law. 

I welcome the opportunity that Sunshine Week provides to focus on the need for and importance of open government and access to information about the workings of your government.  I cannot overstate the importance of full compliance of the state’s open meetings and public records laws.  To that end, I invite all citizens and government entities to contact the Department of Justice whenever our legal service in offering advice in this area can be of help to you.