Open Records
Madison - Government agencies could once again attempt to charge hundreds - even thousands - of dollars to release public records about how police deal with and report on crime, under a draft bill in the Assembly. The bill also would allow agencies to extend those charges to other areas, such as records on taxpayer subsidies to businesses.
It is part of government officials’ job to provide information to the public. I don’t mind citizens paying for hard costs for their requests - and even a little labor cost - but the informations is supposed to be public. It’s part of public officials’ job to provide that information.
Garey Bies should take the “Republican” label off his web site, if he is going to act like a Democrat.
This may be even more dumb than the per diem proposal.
I’m confident the Republican leadership will reign this RINO in.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 26, 2013 at 1654 hrs
This is certainly not a new topic, but as one of your commenters with actual experience in dealing with these requests from the other side of the fence, I’d concur that it’s important to find a balance of reasonableness. Most open records requests are easy to fulfill and get taken care of promptly. Some of them, to put it bluntly, are garbage requests that consume ridiculous amounts of staff time - time ultimately being paid for by taxpayers. After all, the time an agency staffer spends redacting letters or making hundreds of photocopies is time they’re not spending on other work that needs to be done.
The key is to find a way to word a bill that ensures that there’s a way to recover costs from those requesters that are consuming a great deal of resources. For example, newspapers pay their employees to spend time doing research. When journalists file open records requests, they’re effectively outsourcing their own research work to taxpayer-funded employees. The requests are fine. The expectation that taxpayers subsidize those costs is not.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on January 27, 2013 at 0048 hrs
Some of them, to put it bluntly, are garbage requests that consume ridiculous amounts of staff time - time ultimately being paid for by taxpayers.
We should not leave this decision to local bureaucrats to determine whether a request is “ridiculous”.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1016 hrs
Careful. Aaron Swartz thought taxpayer-funded information should be free, too. All those articles he “illegally” downloaded? Taxpayer-funded science research at universities. How / why the secret service got involved is what nobody can satisfactorily answer.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1201 hrs
If it’s public information, and they’re whining about the time it takes to respond to each specific request ... why not just put it all online and make it easy to search / sort it? Within reason of course.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1205 hrs
Howard, what’s reasonable? Give us some details. Otherwise, I’ll just presume that you’re being deliberately vague because you recognize that your argument works way better in theory than in practice.
These arguments always sound great in principle but in reality I can assure you that it would be an even larger time and money suck to go that route - for the legislature, the governor, state agencies, police stations, you name it. It would require that records be proactively reviewed and redacted, as opposed to now, where records are reactively reviewed and redacted.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that 99+ percent of everything that comes into a legislative office, for instance, is never requested by anyone. Depending on the office, it might sit in a file cabinet for a few years.
If you want to provide the funding so that state and local governments can hire more employees to be full-time scanners and redacters, be my guest in lobbying for those additional FTE positions to create giant databases of information that 99% of the public will never use. I’m sure Bill Lueders and the rest of his journalist buddies would be thrilled to have your support.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on January 27, 2013 at 1246 hrs
Every police incident report has to be examined to make sure the case is closed; a victim’s safety won’t be endangered; a juvenile isn’t named (but only after checking to see if any of the exceptions in the Children’s Code and Juvenile Justice Code apply); and a host of other things that the law says have to be evaluated. If the case is closed but awaiting trial, then the custodian has to ask the prosecutor whether the report can be released outside of the discovery process. Every denial must be explained in writing. The requester doesn’t have to identify himself or provide a reason for the inquiry; the report may need the victim’s address redacted. There are few court decisions that define what an “overly broad” request is, so asking for a year’s worth of reports isn’t per se unreasonable.
Every time this issue comes up, someone says, “put it on-line” or “it’s all computerized”. The Journal’s lawyer pretty much said all you have to do is push a button and you have the statistics, except that the Journal didn’t have a story until it could read the police reports to reconcile them with the questionable crime statistics.
I haven’t been able to find Bies’ draft bill on his site or at the LRB, so I don’t know what he’s proposing. The legislative intent has always been to facilitate public access for records and meetings, so any solution he proposes would have to be fairly narrow in scope, despite the hysteria the Journal is trying to drum up.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1415 hrs
Here in Richfield, we have a local nut job that has filed countless open record requests. The local politicians and bureaucrats, of course, with nothing to hide, I am told, have pushed everything past an attorney incurring thousands of dollars in charges whining all the way about the abuse of the Open Records request process. In defense of our local nut job, there were some very unusual zoning changes that could have benefited the public if the records would not have been mysteriously lost.
Don’t know what the right balance is but, speaking from personal experience, when I asked our Friess Lake School for budget details, I got 600 pages of printed ledger with no account key. They obviously had no intention of dealing honestly with me. So short of physically removing the records and redacting them myself, what is a tax paying citizen to do when he catches the local bureaucrats wasting money?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1906 hrs
...have pushed everything past an attorney incurring thousands of dollars in charges…
Not that I want to give your local vigorous civic requester any ideas….
The State Supreme Court just ruled he municipality lawyer bill is subject to open records law, free of redaction:
It’s clear WI values open records no matter how much of a burden it presents.
I suggest the local government unit scan all records in and make them available electronically. That would save money, especially when you have an “assertive civic records requester.” (or “nut job” if one prefers.)
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1931 hrs
At least your school district responded, Bill. About 10 years ago, I asked three WBSD board members to turn over emails regarding a district official who was forced to resign. Two never responded to my request, a slam-dunk violation of the law. The District Attorney at that time washed his hands of it.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 1956 hrs
Kevin, did you read comment #7? It’s a little more complicated than “scan all records and make them available electronically”.
The most extreme example of open records access controversies I can think of would be the saga of Gold Bar, Washington, a town which, in 2010, spent over 12% of its entire operating budget responding to PRRs from two individuals.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 27, 2013 at 2222 hrs
To tag on to Major Booris’ comment, people who don’t have an understanding of how one complies with open records requests should understand that a record custodian (a role I fulfilled for about 2 1/2 years as the clerk of an Assembly committee) has a legal obligation to redact information not subject to disclosure. The statutory language isn’t permissive, but prescriptive:
If a record contains information that is subject to disclosure under s. 19.35 (1) (a) or (am) and information that is not subject to such disclosure, the authority having custody of the record shall provide the information that is subject to disclosure and delete the information that is not subject to disclosure from the record before release. (emphasis added)
The “shall” applies to the verb “provide” and the verb “delete.” That makes this whole fairy tale of just scanning stuff and throwing it online incredibly time consuming. In fact, a record keeper who acted in such a manner (disclosing without redacting) would be breaking the law and could land his employer in a whole world of legal hurt.
Like I said earlier, the vast majority of open records requests are totally benign. A lot of the requests I got were things like “can I get a written copy of such-and-such person’s testimony” or “can I get a list of people who testified” (which is required anyway as part of the committee report). The concern that Bies is trying to address is those requests that require copious amounts of staff time to comply - either because the request is very broad or, as Another Jed has carefully outlined, because the request is for records that are extremely complicated to handle.
There’s a reason that when you look at the open records law as published by the state, it is annotated with literally hundreds of clarifications from case law and advisory opinions from the Attorney General. There is perhaps no other area of state law that is more complicated and that routinely is forced to balance conflicting interests.
Posted by Recess Supervisor on January 28, 2013 at 0139 hrs
The most extreme example of open records access controversies I can think of would be the saga of Gold Bar, Washington, a town which, in 2010, spent over 12% of its entire operating budget responding to PRRs from two individuals
No different, in terms of expense, than a small business owner going through a “random” sales tax audit from State of WI.
We cry and have compassion for givernment units going through this, but when it comes to taxpayers….
Full steam ahead! Stick it to ‘em, in tax “information” audits.
I had to apend $10K on legal and accounting on my “audit” before vindicating myself. It took 2.5 years!
If you are concerned about this, let’s stop, constantly, ravaging taxpayers with information demands from the crazy “nut jobs” at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue!
As someone who has been severely mistreated by “progressive” government under Doyle, I have little sympathy for government units under these conditions.
These “civic minded infdividuals” are still one step above in treatment of their local governement than how their government would treat them in a tax audit!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 28, 2013 at 0756 hrs
As someone who has been severely mistreated by “progressive” government under Doyle, I have little sympathy for government units under these conditions.
Such a grown up attitude on life.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 28, 2013 at 1730 hrs
VA,
Such a grown up attitude on life.
Just shining the light on “progressive” government plantation abuse and educating liberals that slavery was done away with in 1863.
You should really read Esacape from Camp 14, it details the accounts Shin Dong-Hyuk who escaped a N. Korean slave camp at age of 23 after spending his whole life there. He and his whole family’s life, work, and freedom, were disposed of by the socialist state as well. It’s a chilling book, socialism of full display to its natural result: Masters with all the power (government) and slaves with no power.
The most chilling part is where the culture of slave camp convinced to turn his mother and brother in attempting to escape at the age of 14. His mother and brother were immediately executed by the socialist.
Whenever other people, and their effort, is simply a resource to be disposed of, that is a N. Korean socialist attitude. A tax audit by any State or Federal agency is EXCACTLY that attitude.
After reading this excellent book, I think the only difference between U.S. socialists and N. Korean socialists is that U.S. socialists still let us think we own our personal taxpayer slave camps yet.
It makes us happier slaves, for now.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 28, 2013 at 1814 hrs
Well Kevin has proven his life living in fear. Sad life it must be.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 28, 2013 at 1940 hrs
Well Kevin has proven his life living in fear. Sad life it must be.
Not quite. One lesson I’ve learned from all the progressive/liberal abuse over the years is: Don’t take it. Stand up and expose the basic hostility toward liberty, freedom, and the abusive basic human rights record through history.
I live in faith that the human rights abuses of socialism can be stopped.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 28, 2013 at 2052 hrs
Kevin- I read that book, in fact I have stood on the DMZ, and I have tested North Korean air responses in my B52. If after reading Shin’s book you think that
“the only difference between U.S. socialists and N. Korean socialists is that U.S. socialists still let us think we own our personal taxpayer slave camps yet.”
then you have deeper problems. I suggest visiting a mental health professional.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1026 hrs
John,
So seeing the socialist evil in action, firsthand, is even worse?
Thank you for your military service.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1105 hrs
No comparing “liberals” to North Korea is worse. Once again, I am not convinced you are not a lefty pretending to be a conservative.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1424 hrs
John,
N. Korea is not what you get when you continually cede power and responsibility, via socialist policy, to one central authority?
N. Korea is socialism in full practice. All resources and decisions are determined by the leaders. Individuals have little to no control over resources or their daily lives…socialism.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1544 hrs
First of all, you have zero idea what socialism actually means. Second, swap everything for conservative and Hitler and you see how absolutely bizarre and asinine your statement is.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1751 hrs
John,
Hitler was a socialist.
He even had the word “socialist” in his political party name.
It’s not accurate to discount Hitler as not being a socialist in practice. Hitler was even elected by democratic means and took more and more power by seizing resources from the people.
Hitler is a classic socialist.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1901 hrs
Dude you need help.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1903 hrs
John,
I had a professor ask me in a poly sci class one time “where do libertarians fit on the traditional left-right political line?”
I answered: “Libertarians do not fit on your narrow one dimensional political model.”
Long story short, I drew him a 2 dimensional graph where authoritarians (Stalin, Hitler, other socialist,) were properly lumped together and opposite of Libertarians. (Essentially the Nolan chart)
The poly sci professor was impressed, and he liked disconnecting Stalin from the traditional “left” wing orientation, although as a raging socialist himself, he did not like me saying socialism was authoritarian, even though it was completely true.
Liberal poly sci professors always liked having me in class, and never indicated I needed “help”. I always got an “A” in poly sci classes, despite expressing similar viewpoints, offending their socialist sensibilities.
Does this mean UW-system needs its funding cut, discussing these ideas?
If so, I can agree with that.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 30, 2013 at 1916 hrs
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