Action Alert: Open Record Law, Correspondence By Jon Erpenbach & Susan Michetti

A well written letter to A.G. Van Hollen, from SWWAP supporter Susan Michetti. Why not contact the AG, and your representatives as well. Let them know, the legislature is not immune to open record requests.

Attorney General, State of Wisconsin
POB 7857
Madison WI 53707-7857
Fax 608 267 2779
9-19-2013

To Whom It May Concern:

All elected officials in the State of Wisconsin are subject to the open records laws and clearly must comply with these laws, including WI Senator Vukmir. These open records laws were specifically enacted to apply to ALL elected officials within the State, particularly State and local politicians, as well as to all meetings or gatherings where a quorum of any public decision-making entity in the entire decision-making process exists at any time and/or at any place, regardless of location, intention, and/or status of legal announcement. Exemptions used in the past almost always were applied to sensitive personnel information. Senator Vukmir clearly does not have a special exemption.

The enforcement of open records laws must be consistent, persistent, fair, and applied across the playing field in a non-partisan way. Anything less is unfair and is an indicator of some form of nepotism or of favoritism.

Uniquely, Senator John Erpenbach was told by your office that he had to comply with open records laws and was instructed to turn over all constituents’ emails without redacting personally identifying information. Senator Erpenbach complied with this order from your office.

Senator Vukmir is not above the law nor exempt from it. The documents being requested are not about sensitive personnel matters and must be released by Senator Vukmir. Since the law pertained to Senator Vukmir’s peer Senator Erpenbach, it logically applies to Senator Vukmir. The open records laws must be enforced consistently, persistently, fairly, and equally with the lack of any appearance of selectivity for any reason, particularly partisanship. To the extent that these laws are not enforced consistently, persistently, fairly, and equally without any appearance of selectivity and/or partisanship, that is the extent to which malfeasance of office and to which negligence of public trust occurs in this concern. 

Moreover, I find it unacceptable in the computer age that no “public email” address exists for the Attorney General’s office. Letter writing is a secondary method of communicating for those who do not have internet access. The fax method of communicating is also secondary and is used primarily by offices of business entities, NGOs, and government agencies; it is used much less often by individual citizens because it is more cumbersome. The absence of a “public email” address would, in effect, close down the major pathway for citizen input. In effect, the lack of a “public email” address shuts out a large number of citizens who would have otherwise written to your office on this issue and other issues. This presents an obstacle blocking the path of action that requires extra energy to go around and get beyond it.

A representative democracy functions best with maximum transparency, openness, and facilitation of information released to the public arena as well as of expression and input by the public to those who are the elected or appointed representatives or surrogates for them in government and whom hold such offices in order to make decisions for that very same public. These surrogates representing the public are not elected to office to hide their decision-making from the public when citizens or journalists want this information. Balanced and fair free exchange requires the lack of obstacles and requires that all are treated equally without special preference. This requires the lack of extra steps that slow down First Amendment rights which are Constitution- guaranteed federally to not be abridged by obstacles, such as extra steps or sanctions that generate intimidation. This requires that the ability of citizens as well as journalists must be open and transparent in order to obtain facts documented or operating in the background impacting decision-making by elected officials. This requires openness and transparency to all citizens and journalists without undue limitations that abridge their First Amendment rights. This requires the ability of citizens and journalists to express themselves without undue limitations that abridge their First Amendment rights throughout all aspects of public governance, particularly at the State level.

I ask you immediately to require Senator Vukmir to release her documents without redaction in their entirety, as requested, and to sanction her for any failure to meet the timeline required by the open records laws.

We need to protect openness and transparency in Wisconsin’s governance in order to protect the best interests of the public and of the State from corrupting influences. I would hope as Attorney General that you would agree this.