Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know

In honor of Sunshine Week — a celebration and advocacy of open government — The Northwoods River News presents the newspaper’s 2024 awards and grades for openness in conducting public business.

The following grades are calculated using several measures, including how responsive officials have been this past year to open records’ requests, how diligently they have strived to keep the workings of government open, how willing they were to communicate with the media and with the public, as well as their past track record.

Hall of Fame

Vilas County circuit court judge Neal A. “Chip” Nielsen

Judge Nielsen has retired now, but his presence will always loom large in the field of open government. His was a lifetime record of consistency in supporting transparency, and we have never seen a public official match it. 

While we do not expect to see his record equaled any time soon — though we certainly hope it will be — it is enough for now to say that all public officials should study judge Nielsen’s record in open government as a model for their own conduct.

In several rulings, judge Nielsen articulated the principle of open government better than we ever could:

“In a democracy, or a democratic republic, certain principles are of paramount concern to ensure the sustainability of that form of government. In a government of, by, and for the people, there must be maintained a requisite degree of transparency. That is, people must be able to see how effectively their government functions. And there must be a free press, the Fourth Estate, as it has been called, in addition to the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government to examine the workings of those branches and to inform the public of matters that are of importance to ensure that the government works as intended and that the rights and indeed the best interests of its citizens are respected and promoted.”

A+: The best of the best

Oneida County clerk Tracy Hartman

Oneida County clerk Tracy Hartman continues to run an efficient and open office and to go the extra mile to provide helpful links and suggestions about the information requested within her purview, not just for media but for the general public. More to the point, Hartman doesn’t play games like some others in county government. She neither sits on requests nor buries them in the bureaucracy. Most of all, she is fair. The same degree of transparency and service is given to all who seek it, as it should be. In her office, it’s not who you are that gets results. 

Minocqua town clerk Roben Haggart 

For years now, Roben Haggart could be called a standard bearer for things related to open government at the local level and we’ve seen absolutely nothing at all to change that consideration. Anytime anyone from this newspaper, from the publisher on down, has requested information, they get it and, unless she’s got the day off or is out of the office for just a bit, it’s usually within minutes.

For Haggart, it isn’t a matter of being friends with the media but more having a really great idea of what it is that open, transparent government, local or otherwise, is supposed to look like.

A

City of Rhinelander

The City of Rhinelander continues to set an example for other municipalities in terms of openness and transparency. This year’s grade reflects the tremendous progress that has been made over the last few years. Now nearly halfway through his term, Mayor Kris Hanus has set the bar high by making himself available for one-on-one conversations about city issues.

Also, the city now holds semi-regular listening sessions with both the mayor and city administrator where members of the public can ask questions about any city-related issue on their mind.

The trend of seeking out public input continued in 2023 when the city was considering a potential change in policy related to plowing city roads. Rather than implementing the change and hoping for the best, the city held a series of listening sessions, inviting affected property owners to come to City Hall and be heard. And then, after the idea was met with a lack of enthusiasm, city officials listened to the people and dropped the idea. 

The city’s department heads have also distinguished themselves with respect to transparency.

New city administrator Patrick Reagan, who has just completed his first year in office, has answered every question posed to him in a timely manner and the same can be said for city finance director Wendi Bixby.

Fire chief Brian Tonnancour, police chief Lloyd Gauthier and city clerk Austyn Zarda can also be counted on to promptly respond to questions and timely release important information. 

For example, Zarda offered prompt, clear information earlier this year when the city council experienced a vacancy due to the passing of alderman Tom Kelly. Tonnancour reliably provides informative reports on structure fires (including, in 2023, the blaze that destroyed a building on Thayer Street that was more than 100 years old) and Gauthier continues to be a model of responsible government.

The most recent example was in January when the chief sent out a press release on an incident involving an individual with mental health issue in order to debunk rumors that there had been a shooting at the high school. 

We should also acknowledge city attorney Steve Sorenson, who is prompt in responding to requests for information and provides important explanations/clarifications when complicated legal matters arise. 

Finally, we should note that the city now has an ethics committee that meets on a regular basis. The group recently forwarded a resolution to the city council setting forth ethical principles all those who are serving city residents and business should follow. The group has also recommended training for elected and appointed officials as well as city employees. 

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty

For some years now the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has served as one of the state’s leading watchdogs for government transparency and accountability. It has filed (and won) multiple lawsuits to force local governments and school districts to follow transparency and open government laws, and it did so again this past year when it sued the town of Hayward for refusing to notice and hold a special town meeting that had been rightfully and legally requested by residents of the town. 

As WILL Associate Counsel Skylar said, the residents deserved to be heard and the town of Hayward had ignored its legal obligations to the people.

Lawsuits like these are especially valuable in communities in place that don’t have aggressive watchdog newspapers. Indeed, when it comes to that, Oneida and Vilas counties are sadly the exception, not the rule, in Wisconsin.

This past year, WILL performed another public service for citizens, publishing The Citizens Guide To Open Government, which lays out the law that governs open records and open meetings while also providing best practices for holding government accountable.

According to WILL, The Citizen’s Guide series aims to spur civic engagement and involvement in the processes of government. 

“Like the Citizen’s Guide to the Administrative State, this guide has two aims,” the group states. “The first is to educate citizens on the public records and open meetings laws at a general level. The second is to provide citizens with practical tips they can use to ensure that those laws are followed.”

It is a good new resource. From the report, the public can learn how to make a public records request, deal with delays and responses, navigate open meetings issues, and learn other best practices to engage with government. 

Karl Jennrich

Long-time zoning director Karl Jennrich comes away with an “A” this year both for his expansive explanations at zoning meetings and for his prompt response to records requests.

Not that we agree with Jennrich on a host of zoning and enforcement issues — we don’t — but it’s hard to argue that he does not believe in transparency and openness, and that’s rarified air for public officials these days. Jennrich remains accessible and quick to fulfill requests and an utterly responsive public official. 

Equally important, he takes the time at committee meetings to explain the reasoning behind the department’s recommendations, and takes pains to translate sometimes complex jargon into lay terms that the public — and the committee — can understand. That’s just the opposite of many department heads, who give out as little information as possible and who talk in ever wider circles of chaos and confusion.

State Rep. Rob Swearingen

State Rep. Rob Swearingen (R-Rhinelander) again scores an excellent Sunshine Week grade, this year in particular for co-authoring legislation that will rectify a terrible state Supreme Court decision on public records.

The bill has now passed the Senate.

Year before last, the high court overturned precedent by requiring that someone who files an open records lawsuit can only collect legal fees by prevailing in court. That allows a government to stall and delay the release of requested records until a requester files a lawsuit, then simply turn over the requested record without having to pay legal costs incurred by the requester.

This bill would alter the statutory definition of “prevail” to allow courts to award attorney fees in instances where records are released only because the requester filed a lawsuit to get the records. 

Swearingen also continues to be one of the most responsive legislators when asked for records.

State Sen. Van Wanggaard

Every year, it seems, state Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) unveils a new bill to promote transparency — usually the bills are torpedoed by his colleagues in the Legislature or vetoed by the governor — and this year was no different as he pursued the “Parole Transparency Act,” an effort to improve the transparency and efficiency of the Parole Commission and ensure that victims can be involved and have knowledge of the parole process.

Under the bill — which is again bogged down after passing the Senate judiciary committee on a 5-2 vote — the commission’s exemption from the Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law would be ended. The bill would also require the commission to post notices of its meetings on the Department of Corrections internet site, and post guidance documents used by the commission when making parole determinations. The commission would also have to post monthly and annual totals of persons granted and denied parole, and those who have had parole revoked. 

“For the last year, I have been investigating the operations of the Parole Commission but trying to find out what’s been going on has been exceedingly difficult,” Wanggaard has said. “The Commission has been operating in the shadows. Stonewalling of records requests, sidestepping and violating Open Meeting laws, and violating the constitutional rights of crime victims has to stop. The Parole Transparency Act sheds light on the parole-granting process while still maintaining the privacy rights of inmates.”

Of course, the bill has gone missing in a state government that, by and large, remains notably hostile to open government and transparency.

State Sen. Chris Larson

Here’s another lawmaker who works for open government but never succeeds. Still, state Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) operates under the old belief that, if you don’t at first succeed, try, try again. And so every year he introduces a bill to end the state Legislature’s exemption of itself from the state’s open records law.

“In honor of #SunshineWeek, I was proud to join @RepAnderson45 and open government advocates this morning in introducing a bill to repeal the WI legislature’s bizarre open records loophole that allows any legislator to delete public records up until the moment an ORR [open records request] is received,” he posted on X last year.

“… The people deserve to know what the people who work for them are up to (and who’s trying to influence them). This bill makes that more possible! ...Transparency is not a partisan issue!”

Unfortunately for Larson, he may have to try, try again for about hundred more times, if he lives that long.

Oneida County supervisor Billy Fried

Oneida County supervisor Billy Fried remains a solid and consistent voice for open government. He is always responsive, and this year helped guide through the county board a reform of the county code that eliminated an insinuation that all records requests have to be reviewed automatically by the corporation counsel’s office. 

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany

Both as a state legislator and as a congressman, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has been one of the the more responsive of elected officials.

In Congress, Rep. Tiffany has not had much chance to vote on legislation directly related to open government, but he has pursued transparency in all quarters of the government. To cite just one example, Tiffany this past year authored the FAIR Act, which would require the DOJ, the ATF, and FBI to electronically record interviews with criminal defendants.

“The DOJ should serve every U.S. citizen with open, fair, and impartial justice; instead, they are weaponizing their power against the American people,” Tiffany said when introducing the bill. “The FAIR Act will hold the DOJ accountable and ensure fairness for criminal defendants.”

Since 2014, Tiffany observed, the DOJ has had a policy that presumes that custodial interviews be electronically recorded, but, he said, without a law that requires interviews to be recorded, DOJ agents and officers were free to ignore the policy without any consequences. 

In fact, Tiffany said, the FBI’s standard practice is for agents to take handwritten notes during an interview and summarize those notes in part from memory on a form. Those forms have sometimes been heavily edited, Tiffany said.

Tiffany has been a constant voice for more transparency, too, when it comes to vetting Afghan refuges coming in through the borders and he has worked to cast a light on the growing problem of drugs and the problem of human trafficking and exposing the dangers posed by the nation’s wide-open southern border.

He has raised awareness on these and other issues, and gets a good grade for furthering the free flow of information to and from American citizens.

St. Germain town board, clerk, treasurer

The St. Germain town board, clerk, and treasurer have all earned top marks for their commitment to transparency and openness, continuing an impressive multi-year run of “A” grades or higher.

Town supervisors are (chairman) Tom Christensen, Brian Cooper, Kalisa Mortag, Ted Ritter, and Jim Swenson. Jeanna Vogel is the treasurer, and June Vogel is the clerk.

All of St. Germain’s town officers have been diligent in making themselves available to the Times for interviews and in providing documents when requested. Phone calls and emails are typically returned within an hour. Officeholders frequently take time away from their day-jobs to answer press inquiries.

As a whole, the board goes above and beyond the requirements of statute in its policy of ordinance adoption. Wisconsin law mandates any new or amended zoning ordinances must be published twice in a local newspaper and subject to a public hearing before being adopted.

In St. Germain, any proposed ordinance or amendment (involving forfeiture provisions, as opposed to those regulating board policies and procedures) is published twice and goes to a public review and comment session before being voted upon.

In recent weeks, the board delayed taking any action on a proposed outdoor lighting ordinance due to a high volume of public input on the subject. Supervisors repeatedly encouraged anyone with an opinion to be heard before board-level discussions begin.

For several years, no resident of St. Germain has been able to say “this passed behind closed doors” or “the town board pulled a fast one on us.” Anyone who attempts such a claim simply isn’t paying attention.

While none of the town’s elected officials do less-than-excellent work in the interest of openness, three individuals deserve special recognition. Clerk June Vogel ranks among the most organized and efficient clerks in Vilas and Oneida counties. Her speed in replying to requests can be described as blinding. It is the norm for her to return calls or emails within just a few minutes of receiving them. Within the last few months, Vogel fulfilled a complicated open records request from the Times while she was on an out-of-town vacation, and did so with great expediency. Would that all public servants were so dedicated. Town chairman Tom Christensen has a fair amount of statutory latitude regarding how town meetings are run and what business is discussed. Christensen allows for maximum public input on governance. It is Christensen’s policy to field questions and comments from anyone in attendance at a town board meeting (or participating by Zoom) at any point during the meetings, so long as a motion is not on the floor. This policy often leads to long meetings and some tedium, but no one ever leaves a board meeting without the opportunity to have his/her questions answered and opinions heard.

It is wholly at the discretion of a town board chairperson as to which items will appear on a meeting’s agenda and what business will be discussed. Christensen has told The Times he feels that particular power can lead to abuses, such as chairpersons being able to dodge discussions and questions about topics which make them uncomfortable or politically vulnerable. Christensen has a standing policy to field requests for agenda additions from town officials and constituents alike. There is a formal paperwork protocol in place for elected officials to do so; constituents can call or email Christensen with their requests.

“If something is important to the town, we should discuss it whether it makes me uncomfortable or not,” he told the Times. 

Supervisor Ted Ritter also deserves accolades. Within the last few months, the Times made an open-records request for a copy of a draft ordinance being discussed by the town’s zoning committee. 

Even though the town had not yet received an attorney’s opinion as to whether or not it was legally obligated to turn over the document, Ritter did so within 45 minutes of The Times asking for it. 

“I’d always rather err on the side of transparency,” he told the Times.

Town of Newbold

There have been no issues with the Newbold town board this last year. Town chairman Dan Hess has carried on the high standard of government openness established by former town chairman Dave Kroll. 

Hess responds to requests by the Times quickly and never hesitates to share what he knows. Town clerk Kim Gauthier also helps this board earn a high mark by never missing a beat in sending the Times meeting agendas and minutes and accommodating any other requests.

Lake Tomahawk town clerk Sharon Trimberger Lintereur

Lake Tomahawk town clerk Sharon Trimberger Lintereur gets a high mark for always being responsive to any request submitted to her by the Times. She seems to go out of her way  to make sure reporters covering meetings have everything they need.

Lac du Flambeau town chairman Matt Gaulke 

The ongoing situation involving four roads in the town of Lac du Flambeau, which involves the town, the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians and title insurance companies representing landowners on those four roads, has not been easy for elected officials to navigate.

A year later, with multiple lawsuits of different types now pending, a few of them against the town, Gaulke has remained as accessible to the media as he was before the tribe  initially barricaded the four roads on Jan. 31, 2023. 

There are those who wouldn’t give Gaulke an A for his handling of the road situation to this poin,t but that isn’t what this grade is about; it’s his openness with the media and answering our questions when he can. 

In fact, town staff, including town clerk Sue Schoonover, has been helpful in providing releasable information regarding the road issue. 

Minocqua town board/plan commission

We’re going to go with an A this year, up from a B last year which was up from an “incomplete” in 2022 for the town board and plan commission because of, at the time, some questionable open meetings shenanigans tied into social media posts regarding the possible purchase by the town of the Campanile parking lot by then-town supervisor John Thompson and current town supervisor and plan commission member Brian Fricke. 

The gist of the issue was whatever had been discussed about the possible purchase by the town had been done in closed session and, basically, not something for social media fodder. 

With that little speed bump out of the way and things settled down, we feel an A rating is warranted this year. 

Vilas County Sheriff Joe Fath and Chief Deputy Patrick Schmidt 

Both Vilas County sheriff’s office leaders excel at responding to media queries on a variety of subjects and issues and that type of cooperation is reflected in our dealings with other sections of the sheriff’s office as well. From the top down, the department is distinguishing itself.

Minocqua Police Department

Led by chief Dave Jaeger, the staff of the police department the newspaper deals with on a regular basis promptly provides records that can be released to the public.

In most cases, those records are in the form of incident reports and accident reports. 

Whatever the case, when the information that can be released is asked for, it’s provided. 

Woodruff Police Department

Primarily, the newspaper staff interacts with the department’s administrative secretary, Lori Janusz, who provides a weekly rundown of calls department personnel are involved with as well as incident and copies of state accident reports officers have filed. 

Lac du Flambeau tribal police chief T.J. Bill

Our dealings with Lac du Flambeau T.J. Bill continue to be positive as he provides us with information asked of him pertaining to incidents he or any of his officers have been involved in while helping other law enforcement agencies off the Lac du Flambeau reservation.

Cassian town board

After being off our regular meeting coverage “wheel” for awhile, the Cassian town board returned to frontburner status last summer when it received an application for the construction of a 36-bed rehabilitation center for adolescents. 

Since then, whenever we’ve asked for any information regarding the matter or if we’ve needed to contact town officials, they’ve been readily available.

A-

School District of Rhinelander

The School District of Rhinelander continues to distinguish itself in terms of its commitment to transparency. District superintendent Eric Burke and school administrators respond to questions in a timely manner, even when complex matters arise. For example, both Burke and the district’s legal counsel were forthcoming in the fall of 2023 when a former student filed a federal lawsuit alleging sex-based harassment. 

The district has also come along way in terms of public outreach and communication. Voters are set to head to the polls in April and will decide whether the district receives approximately $26 million to upgrade technical education facilities.

To its credit, the district was slow and methodical in getting to this point. There was a lengthy period of investigation, followed by a series of public informational meetings, before the school board voted on the referendum question. With the vote just weeks away, the district is in the midst of holding three more information sessions where school officials provide a concise explanation for the board’s decision to go to referendum. The district also continues to do a good job of advising the media of student and team projects and accomplishments as well as community education opportunities.

We will, however, renew our annual suggestion that the district use more specific language on its agendas when referring to topics to be discussed in closed session. 

Hazelhurst

The Hazelhurst town board appears to be a proponent of open government. Town chairman Ted Cushing, who is also an Oneida County supervisor, responds to any requests from the Times, it seems, to the best of his ability. He also welcomes comments from the public at board meetings. The other two board members, Jon Schmitz and Paul Fuhrman, and town clerk Christy Myshchyshyn are easily approachable, too. The only knock on the Hazlehurst town board and government openness is, unlike other area town boards the Times covers, it doesn’t post the names of its board members and contact information for each one of them on the town website. 

Maybe the reporters of the Times have become spoiled and it’s not a big deal, but it would make things easier sometimes, especially under tight deadlines.

B+

Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski

We again single out board chairman Holewinski for his consistent individual commitment to open government. Most recently he helped drive a new modification of the county code to delete the suggestion that all open records requests must be routed through the corporation counsel’s office. 

Holewinski was also a leader in a previous overhaul of the county’s open government laws.

He has always signaled an inherent distaste for closed meetings except when absolutely necessary. Two years ago for instance, Holewinski was a leader of an effort by supervisors to object to then chairman Dave Hintz’s bid to move the county board into closed session to discuss open government issues. Yes, that’s right, Hintz wanted to discuss in secret the county’s ongoing problems with secrecy, which, in a nutshell, summarized the problem. 

But Holewinski led the objections and stopped it. He is a breath of fresh air compared to Hintz, especially on transparency. It is refreshing to receive actual documents you can read instead of fully redacted and black-blotted papers. 

On the Pelican River Forest easement situation this year, Holewinski stood front and center in denouncing the DNR’s lack of proper notice to the county about the easement purchase, and he called out the agency’s dishonesty in its attempt to hide local opposition from the Natural Resources Board.

The slight deduct this year is again for the Bangstad debacle and the sloppy handling of the public hearing adjournment that ensnared the zoning committee (see planning and development grades for details) but, other than that, we do have a committed open government advocate leading the county board.

Oneida County sheriff Grady Hartman

This grade is a difficult one because, while still a very good grade, it is a serious downgrade from Hartman’s platinum level rank last year.

Now, make no mistake about it, when it comes to his belief in transparency, we believe the sheriff stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of officeholders and above almost everyone else in county government, with a couple of notable exceptions listed in these pages. Hartman’s actions over the years have demonstrated that his words are not the product of mere political posturing but of heartfelt belief in the wisdom of open government and the necessity of enforcing the open government laws, if the law is to have any meaning at all.

We remind our readers that his department continues to fulfill open records requests promptly, and the department has been a strong and positive voice in advocating for Oneida County’s reform of open records laws, including the most recent reform deleting language that suggested that elected officials run records requests by the corporation counsel, which has seriously bogged down the system.

He has also been a long-time advocate for adding requirements that records custodians attend open records training within their orientation period and stay up-to-date with new open records case law.

What’s more, no one should ever forget the sheriff’s department’s 2019 raid on Rhinelander City Hall, prompted by an open records complaint filed by the Northwoods River News. 

We called it a courageous action to defend the integrity of our democratic institutions, and it was.

For all his work in the field, Hartman was honored with the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s inaugural Sunshine in Government award, which recognizes efforts by Wisconsin citizens and public officials to protect and strengthen open government.

So, one might ask, with all those accolades, why the downgrade?

Well, it all has to do with last year’s disastrous zoning committee handling of a conditional use permit application by Kirk Bangstad. We’ll go into more detail about that when we discuss corporation counsel Michael Fugle’s grade, but suffice it to say here that zoning committee chairman Scott Holewinski admitted that he and the committee violated the county code and violated parliamentary procedure by adjourning a public hearing on the application during the middle of a vote — a vote in which the committee was poised to deny the application.

Holewinski later took responsibility for the violation and completed the vote that was abruptly cut short.

What’s relevant here is that sheriff Hartman should have cited Holewinski for the violation. The sheriff’s own investigation concluded that the committee had violated the county code. Holewinski himself admitted illegally adjourning a public hearing, which strikes at the heart of transparency. 

It is important to observe that the Oneida County code gives the sheriff the authority to issue citations for any violation of the county code. Let us repeat — the sheriff can issue a citation for any violation. That authority is especially important when it comes to parliamentary procedure and transparency, for while there are other authorities to issue citations in other areas — the zoning office issues citations for zoning violations, to cite just one example — there is no one else to issue open government citations but the sheriff.

The corporation counsel might argue that he could issue such a citation, but that argument would be wrong. The county code gives the corporation counsel the power to “handle” all ordinance violations except traffic violations. In other words, once a citation is issued — say, for a zoning violation — the corporation counsel provides the county’s legal representation for that citation.

Granted, “handle” is a vague way to put things, but the dictionary says it means to “manage” issues that may arise, obviously to manage the case after a citation is issued. The code does not give the corporation counsel any explicit authority to issue citations, as it does for the sheriff. If the county board had wanted to do that, it would have done so.

So only the sheriff can prosecute some cases, such as for violating the code’s open government laws. And yet, in this case, even after an investigation by his own department concluded that a violation had occurred, the sheriff did not issue a citation. Hartman defended not doing so, saying Holewinski had admitted the infraction and taken responsibility — true enough — and then remedied the situation by completing the interrupted vote.

One problem is that such infractions, once they are committed, can never be truly remedied. No one can ever say whether the vote taken later would have occurred during the original public hearing, after so time and so many intervening circumstances, but common sense tells you they were two different results.

Another problem is the lack of accountability. If there are never any consequences for breaking open government laws — and there rarely are — public officials will continue to violate the law with impunity, knowing that all they have to do is later apologize. Meanwhile people are injured in multiple ways.

Justice delayed is justice denied, as they say. The biggest problem is the double standard involved. Average citizens generally don’t get to break the law and get away scot-free. Lately we have seen many citations issued for people not compliant with septic pumping requirements, to cite one example. There have even been arrests for such violations. No one gets out of paying the fine by saying “I’m sorry.”

And yet the very government officials who pass such requirements and see that those citations are enforced get away with breaking the law without one single consequence. It’s not fair, and it foments distrust of government. 

Government officials need to be treated the same as average citizens, not as privileged elites. As the enforcer of last resort, the sheriff is the one who must make that happen. Lastly, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has determined that a member of a governmental body can avoid liability if he or she can factually prove that he or she relied on the advice of legal counsel, which was the case here. But that’s irrelevant to being cited. The charge should have been brought, and the committee could argue liability or lack thereof in court.

When it comes to the bedrock of democratic government — transparency — we need accountability more than ever. In Oneida County, that’s sheriff Hartman’s job.

B-

State Sen. Mary Felzkowski

We’ve had a lot of disagreements with Sen. Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) over open government issues in the past — and no doubt they still exist — but in several important issues this past year the senator has emerged as an advocate for transparency.

For one thing, she acknowledged — when she didn’t have to — that she was one of the lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee who objected to the state purchase of the Pelican River Forest easement. She did more. Rather than hide behind the cloak of secrecy that lawmakers usually dress themselves in, she stepped out and challenged the state DNR’s own lack of transparency.

Also this year, Felzkowski introduced a bill to force Wisconsin hospitals to be more transparent about how much they’re charging for procedures. The bill would require hospitals to post a website list of shoppable services, or nonemergency procedures. The bill would ban hospitals from charging for the information or requiring people to set up user accounts to read it.

It would boost price transparency for health care consumers, and is a much needed action to open up the health care market.

C+

Oneida County Planning & Development Committee

In general, the county’s zoning committee and its individual members are very forthcoming with requested records, and they work hard to make sure property owners have a voice when it comes to the roaring lions of the county’s zoning bureaucracy.

The committee has been adamant, too, about not giving “due deference “to the state Department of Natural Resources, otherwise known as bowing before the agency and kissing its feet. In fact, the committee has put the agency’s feet to the fire when it comes to county shoreland zoning provisions the agency says aren’t compliant, challenging the agency to come to a public meeting or hearing to air their grievances in public. 

The DNR always says no — they are loathe to wander outside of their closed doors — but this is in fact the way government is supposed to work.

And yet, and yet, everything local this year seems to come back to the hearing on a CUP application this past summer from Kirk Bangstad and to the committee’s abrupt decision to adjourn that meeting in the middle of a vote to deny the permit.

To be sure, as written elsewhere, chairman Scott Holewinski acknowledged that the committee broke parliamentary procedure when it adjourned — it did so on the advice of corporation counsel Mike Fugle — and committee member Bob Almekinder, to his credit, objected to the adjournment based on the parliamentary violation.

All that is laudable, but what can’t be forgotten is that the illegal adjournment led to a series of events in which Bangstad got his permit, albeit with conditions. He almost certainly would have been denied had the original vote been taken.

The bottom line is, the committee should not have taken corporation counsel Mike Fugle’s advice just because he gave it. Always obeying a corporation counsel makes the counsel a de facto dictator. 

What’s more, the committee was already well aware that Mike Fugle is notorious for not knowing his way out of a legal paper bag. Those of us sitting over here in the peanut gallery have been warning about his advice, yet no one listened. 

Indeed, this was no arcane legal matter that only a lawyer could be expected to know. This was a matter of basic parliamentary procedure, which all county board supervisors are supposed to grasp. The onus was on them.

As we explain our rankings, grades of ‘B’ go to those officials who do an above-average job and who are committed in principle to openness and who side more often than not with open-records’ advocates, yet need more knowledge and education about the law.

That fits the bill here.

D

The U.S. Supreme Court

For some reason neither liberals nor conservatives sitting as judges in the nation’s court system generally tend toward openness. The United States Supreme Court is no exception.

Take for example, their rule that bans recording and cameras from their proceedings. There are no visual records of these proceedings, and yet they involve some of the most consequential issues facing our republic in these modern times. 

From Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility to the validity of awarding government agencies “due deference” in their proceedings against citizens to huge cases involving free speech and the alleged Biden administration’s censorship complex, the court is conducting some of the most important inquiries in history, and yet they are out of sight for all but a few hundred witnesses, themselves mostly lawyers and representatives of the corporate media. 

This should change.

Lac du Flambeau town supervisor Bob Hanson

For the most part, Lac du Flambeau town supervisor Bob Hanson, a retired attorney and also a member of the Vilas County board, appears to do a stellar job representing the town on the town board as well as the Lac du Flambeau area on the county board. 

It’s in that spirit of trying to represent where Hanson is actually going to get dinged for an incident last year in the weeks following the Jan. 31 barricading of four roads by the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. As we have report, the tribe claims easements on the roads expired over a decade ago.

Hanson, without the knowledge of town chairman Matt Gaulke and Gloria Cobb, the other town supervisor, approached the tribal council on his own with a proposal, a proposal that included land owned by the town.

To his credit, he acknowledged what he did and since Gaulke and Cobb had no knowledge of his actions, there’s no question of a potential a walking quorum. 

However, as a town supervisor for the town of Lac du Flambeau, Hanson should have run the idea of a proposal to the tribe, without the details, past Gaulke and Cobb.

At the very least, this should have happened in the open session portion of a town board meeting. 

The details could then be discussed in closed session as a town board and with the town attorney, if necessary.

F

The Wisconsin Supreme Court

One of the first things the new liberal majority in the state Supreme Court did — besides transforming itself into an essentially veto-proof superlegislature — was to meet in secret and vote to curtail the powers of the conservative chief justice. Of course they did so in the name of transparency. 

Specifically, the regressives stripped the chief judge of the power to appoint the state courts director, giving that power instead to the court’s majority. Oh, they also gave themselves the power to effectively make appointments to the Wisconsin Judicial College and to review the court’s budget by forming a new committee consisting of the chief justice and two justices selected by the liberal majority.

Of course, when the conservatives had a majority on the court, they were hardly any better when it came to transparency. Whatever one thinks of the new court’s liberal policies, when it comes to open government, it’s pretty much a horse apiece.

Remember, last year, with the conservatives in charge, the state Supreme Court ruled that a records requester who has gone to court in an open records case must win a outright legal victory to capture any legal fees and court costs.

Prior to the court ruling, requesters who went to court after a records request was denied or delayed only had to show that the record custodian subsequently released a record because a lawsuit was filed and influenced the decision to release the record. 

In that situation, even though the lawsuit was over because the record was released, the requester could still collect legal fees. If that happens now, there is no final disposition in court, and so the records requester cannot collect legal fees.

Critics of the Supreme Court ruling correctly say government custodians can deliberately forestall fulfilling a request, compelling requesters to go to court, and, if they do, simply release the record without penalty. It’s an incentive to stall and delay the release of records, hoping that most people won’t go the extra mile to file a lawsuit but knowing it won’t cost the agency anything if they do go to court.

Fortunately lawmakers are trying to remedy the loophole the court created with this decision (see Rob Swearingen’s grade), and we hope they are successful.

The bottom line is, the state Supreme Court, and most of the courts below it, are engaged in a multi-year judicial rewrite of the state’s open records laws. It’s judicial activism of the worst kind, from both sides of the aisle, and it represents a steady erosion of transparency at all levels of government.

Lake Tomahawk

In recent years, the Lake Tomahawk town board has had no issues with being open and transparent. However, it received an F grade this year due to a recent mishap in not issuing a quorum notice when town chairman George DeMet and town supervisor Lenore Lopez stayed after a publicly posted board meeting to listen to impromptu presentation on enhanced wake ordinances. The Times caught wind of the board’s mistake after Lopez said at a meeting last month a proposed enhanced wake ordinance was sent to the town’s attorney and board members, even though it was the first time the board had discussed the matter at a publicly posted meeting. 

DeMet explained the situation to the Times and took responsibility for not following proper procedure under the state’s open meetings law. Additionally, when it comes to open government, the way in which the board began the process of creating an enhanced wake ordinance was questionable, to say the least.

F-

Wisconsin Counties Association, Wisconsin Towns Association, Wisconsin League of Municipalities, Wisconsin Association of School Boards

Every year, we call for these four special interest organizations — Wisconsin Counties Association, Wisconsin Towns Association, Wisconsin League of Municipalities, and Wisconsin Association of School Boards — to be subjected to the open government laws, where applicable, and to be required to stop using taxpayer dollars to lobby for their special-interest causes.

These groups are quite clear about who they represent: not the citizens of counties, towns, municipalities, or school districts, but the institutional government of counties, towns, municipalities and school districts.

As such, they often advocate for things that institutional interests desire, such as higher taxes, but that citizens don’t, and they often cajole elected boards to go along. What’s worse, they use tax dollars — paid for as membership fees from elected bodies — to lobby against taxpayer interests. 

One of those things they lobby for is more secretive government. These groups have all put great time and effort into various bids to end the requirement that public notices be published in newspapers, for instance.

On the federal level lobbying by government agencies is outlawed; these units of government are essentially state agencies by virtue of their relationship to state government, and they shouldn’t be lobbying, either. When they do, they are almost certain not to lobby for the people so much as for the public officials themselves. That’s why they formed an interest group for themselves, and that means they’ll be lobbying for ever more secrecy, as they did with the public-notice legislation.

Even worse, the WCA has successfully challenged in court that the open-records law doesn’t apply to such entities as WTA and the WCA.

That is preposterous. As the lobbying and educational arms of government interests, these organizations are by definition conducting public business when they lobby for legislation supported by those local governments. 

Any other interpretation renders the very notion of public business superfluous and meaningless.

Oneida County supervisor Tony Rio

This grade relates directly to an October 18 request for records from Rio, which he initially acknowledged, after which he asked the county’s IT department for help in accessing and releasing the records.

Subsequent emails obtained by the Times show that Rio followed up with the IT department on October 30 to see how the request was going; IT director Jason Rhodes replied that his department was working with the county’s corporation counsel on the matter.

After that, nothing was apparently done to move the request forward — or to communicate with the newspaper — until December 1, after the Times filed a complaint.

By that time, as the IT department reported, they had forwarded the records to corporation counsel Michael Fugle, who apologized to Rio and said he would “get it going.”

But it should have been going a lot sooner. Rio might not have had anything to do with his records being shipped to Fugle, but it was his responsibility to ensure that the records request was fulfilled in a timely manner. Rio is the custodian of his own records and Fugle is the county’s attorney, not automatically the attorney for individual supervisors.

Ultimately, district attorney Jillian Pfeifer gave Rio an extra 30 days to turn over the records, and he complied, but the long delay should never have happened. He was guilty of sending the records off to county staff and then forgetting about it, abdicating his legal responsibility, forcing the newspaper to wait 47 days without either being denied or receiving the records.

Rio says he is an open government advocate, but we don’t give grades based on people’s self-assessments. Otherwise we’d be nominating Joe Biden for a membership in True Stories. People are graded on what they actually do, and this year Rio flunked the open government test big time.

Oneida County public health director Linda Conlon

Not much to say about her this year. So far as we know, she remains burrowed deep inside the bowels of the bureaucracy, still a puppet of the public-health establishment and it’s deliberate and anti-transparent attempts to mislead the public about vaccines, even as the public opens its eyes to lies about lockdowns, mandates, and vaccine safety and efficacy. 

She is not to be trusted or believed when she and her staff can say with a straight face they present both sides of a story as well as accurate, complete information about vaccines, especially Covid vaccines. We’d suggest she be replaced, but the poison has been injected so deep into the public health establishment that any successor would no doubt be just as bad or — here’s a scary thought — even worse.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

As we have written many times before, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is the lowest of the low, and the most secretive of the secret. This year, the modus operandi — lie and distort — is the same.

Most egregious this past year was the agency’s behavior in its bid to purchase the Pelican River Forest easement. As Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski has pointed out, the DNR had given the county little notice of the purchase and even less time to object, and when Holewinski did try to object, the agency didn’t respond.

“There was no notification,” Holewinski said. “In about September, the DNR sent me a letter that I had 30 days to submit an approval or disapproval. They gave me a DNR telephone number to call. I called that number five times and left messages.”

Holewinski said he never got a return call until after he submitted a resolution objecting to it.

“Then everybody came out of the woodwork,” he said. “The DNR didn’t do anything. They kind of hid on this thing. All we wanted was simple questions answered and we couldn’t get an answer.”

That’s DNR transparency in a nutshell.

Holewinski also both pointed out that the DNR publicized to the media and to the NRB resolutions passed by towns such as Schoepke supporting the easement, while never mentioning towns that passed resolutions opposing it, such as Monico and Sugar Camp.

It’s always the same old story with the DNR: Closed minds working behind closed doors. They fail miserably.

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski

We almost forgot about her, sitting down there in the bowels of state government, but she surfaced long enough this past year to add to that position’s historical record of intransigence when it comes to open government.

As the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty recounted, last March, the Institute for Reforming Government (IRG) submitted a public records request to Godlewski seeking information involving communications between Evers, former secretary of state Doug La Follette, and Godlewski, but the request went unfulfilled and unanswered.

IRG sought the documents, WILL states, because the records would be “important public documents due to the confusion surrounding the circumstances of La Follete’s resignation just a few months into his term, which allowed Governor Evers to hand-pick Godlewski as his successor — without voter approval — to serve out the remainder of the term.”

WILL filed a lawsuit on behalf of IRG.

 “Under the public records law, Wisconsinites are ‘entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them,’” WILL wrote. “But the secretary of state is demonstrating a worrying inability or unwillingness to comply with this law and fulfill public records in a timely fashion — or, as the public records law states, ‘as soon as practicable and without delay.’ This lack of transparency makes holding public officials accountable difficult or impossible — an unacceptable state of affairs in a representative democracy.”

Godlewski said that no such records existed and called the lawsuit “a conspiracy fishing expedition.”

But her answer in the media doesn’t explain why she simply didn’t give that answer to IRG when the request was made. Maybe she just didn’t deem them worthy of an answer. Or maybe she doesn’t think the public records laws requiring an answer aren’t to be taken seriously.

She’s yet another office holder who simply doesn’t believe in transparency and thus doesn’t believe in accountability or democracy.

President Joe Biden

Not only does President Joe Biden (or whoever makes decisions for him) not want the American people to speak their minds — hence the administration’s great censorship machine — but they don’t want us to know what they are saying and doing behind closed doors.

Like when they mishandle classified documents. 

As U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) pointed out, the White House, the National Archives, and the Justice Department all failed to promptly inform Congress and the American people about mishandled classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president. 

“We first learned about the Penn Biden Center classified documents months after they were found in an unsecure closet,” Comer said. “Then it took the White House weeks to inform the public about the documents found in President Biden’s Wilmington garage. And days later, we learned that there are more documents at the Wilmington residence. Are there more classified documents to be found?”

Comer was and is right that the Biden White House’s secrecy is an alarming matter of national security. Even scarier was that Biden aides were dumpster diving through boxes of documents to see what they could find before a special investigator could.

So much for transparency there, but there’s more.

There’s also no transparency when it comes to the White House’s voter mobilization plans for the upcoming elections. Simply put, the president has repeatedly stonewalled senators who have asked for records about the use of American taxpayer dollars to implement his executive order that instructed federal agencies to engage in voter mobilization and submit to the White House a plan for doing so.

The senators are right to claim that such a policy directive deserves congressional oversight.

Before this year, Biden had already been one of the least transparent presidents ever.

Some, like the Knight Institute, point out that the administration failed to end the unnecessary secrecy surrounding the final legal opinions of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that bind federal agencies and officials on issues of public concern. 

Those legal opinions have the force and effect of law, and so they should be published so the public can see them.

And here’s a really big one: the Biden administration argued before the Supreme Court that the public has no constitutional right to see secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions authorizing the surveillance of Americans. 

Talk about weaponizing the federal government. The refusal to release legal opinions underpinning the government’s very actions speaks to a government that has turned against its citizens, and stays in power through secrecy.

Platinum F: The worst of the worst

Gov. Tony Evers

If we recounted all the ways Gov. Tony Evers has earned this grade, we could write a book.

This year he added to his legacy of authoritarian secrecy.

First, it came to light that the governor was using an alias to send official state emails, using the nome de plume “Warren Spahn.”

It is somewhat apt since Spahn is in the baseball Hall of Fame and Evers is in the Dark State Hall of Fame.

The Evers administration said they used the alias email account as an added measure of digital security. Of course, the other perk is that it makes it much easier to evade open records requests.

This past year Evers also vetoed two bills authored by Senator John Jagler (R-Watertown) designed to increase transparency and improve parental choice. 

The most important was a bill that would have required school districts to collect and report crime data that happens at high schools. 

Here’s how Jagler put it: “We are in a new era of transparency and parents are more interested than ever with having a real look at their kid’s school environment. Governor Evers is blocking a bill that would simply require the reporting of crimes that are happening at our schools. Parents deserve to know how safe their schools are when they say goodbye in the morning.”

In Evers’s view, though, it’s just not right to inform parents about how dangerous your kids’ schools are.

The governor of Wisconsin has such a bad record on open government issues that almost anybody looks good by comparison. 

Over the course of his first term, Evers found many ways to get sued over open records and to demonstrate a downright hatred of open government, and his second term has been no better, and maybe even worse.

Oneida County corporation counsel Michael Fugle

It took a while for Oneida County corporation counsel Michael Fugle to make his way into his job, and now we can say with some confidence that the hapless counsel never made it to the goal line. 

Somewhere he lost his way rather than made his way, and, given his obvious lack of competence in legal matters, may never find a coherent pathway home again.

The big transgression this year was the Kirk Bangstad hearing on a CUP application, in which he interrupted the committee in the middle of taking a vote and advised that they shut things down because some unnamed group needed to use the room. 

It sounded like a made-up excuse just to stop the vote. If that’s what it was, it worked. Even if that wasn’t the case — which would represent direct and dishonest interference in the workings of the elected county board and its committees and grounds for immediate dismissal — it is still a bad look for the corporation counsel.

That is to say, he should have known he was advising the committee to break the law, and he should have apprised them of it. Instead, he advised the committee to break fundamental parliamentary procedure, a requirement of the county code. This is a procedure he is paid quite well to know. Clearly, if we are to give Fugle the benefit of the doubt about his motives, we simultaneously demolish any facade of competence. 

Fugle wasn’t done there. After advising the committee to “adjourn and reconvene” — which would suggest they pick-up with the vote at the next meeting — the corporation counsel proceeded to meet in secret with Bangstad’s attorney to hammer out a compromise. 

What had been a public hearing suddenly became a private negotiation between the subject of the hearing and a lawyer who apparently now fancied himself to be the de facto zoning director. Maybe he thought he was county board chairman, too.

Talk about lack of due process and transparency. Talk about election interference. This guy checks all the boxes for a ticket out to the pasture.

But the Bangstad debacle was not the only major blemish on Fugle’s record. Recently the county board moved to remove from the code any suggestion that all open records requests must wing their way through Fugle’s office for review. 

Corporation counsels have a field day hiding public information from the public — information the public owns — when they get ahold of records. 

Ah, what to leave in, what to leave out? What do we want to give them? How can we redact ever more informations? Shades of Brian Desmond.

The board acted because, after we requested records from supervisor Tony Rio, and, after Rio had then sent the request to the county’s information technology department for help in accessing them, that department automatically sent the records to Fugle for review.

That is how the county works. Never once did the IT department ask Rio if it was all right to do that. They acted as if it was standard protocol. That’s because it was standard protocol.

During this whole fiasco, though, there was not one peep from the clueless and hapless counsel. We can only speculate what he was thinking, but since he did not return the records or ask why they were sent to him — indeed, he assured Rio he would immediately “get it going” — then we assume that he thought he was entitled to them.

Yes, think about it. Mike Fugle thinks he is entitled to judge what county information you can and cannot see, even when he is not the custodian of the records, to which state law gives the absolute power to decide about release.

This is just one more example of a corporation counsel who doesn’t know his jurisdictional boundaries. He thinks he is not only corporation counsel but zoning director and chief censor, too.

Oneida County always seems to come up with the bottom of the barrel in picking its corporation counsel. It ends up with barely functioning but narcissistic dregs who view the county as their kingdom, though they know so little they know not what they are king of. 

We do not know what the next year holds, but, for county supervisors, here’s a little advice for you all — when you see the corporation counsel waddling your way, run like the wind, for there but for the grace of good luck go you.

Incomplete

Oneida County district attorney Jillian Pfeifer

District attorney Jillian Pfeifer has a mixed record this past year, at least in our opinion.

On the one hand, when Pfeifer agreed with the sheriff’s department this past year that the county zoning committee breached its rules of parliamentary procedure, we thought she should have advised the sheriff to issue a code citation.

We know she doesn’t handle county citations, but her opinion would have provided support for the sheriff to act.

She also said the committee did not break the open meetings law when it failed to resume and properly post an August 9 public hearing on Kirk Bangstad’s CUP application, and instead noticed and held an illegal regular meeting instead. To us, that had ‘open meetings violation’ stamped in big red letters all over it.

She also dodged the question of whether it was “best practice” to have corporation counsel Michael Fugle review every records request prior to release, saying that wasn’t an issue for her to decide.

True, as she pointed out, she only has the authority to respond to violations of the law.

But Pfeifer also agreed that there appeared to be a gap in the law when it comes to systemic open records violations, that is, “it fails to address instances where an authority routinely and unduly delays the release of records resulting in repeated violation.”

That means that absent new legislation, the only method of relief available is to seek a mandamus action for each violation, Pfeifer wrote.

Pfeifer also reasonably concluded that “filing a writ of mandamus for every technical violation of open records law, while permissible, may not be the most effective use of taxpayer money given that my primary role is to prosecute crimes in an effort to help keep our community safe.”

Nonetheless, Pfeifer concluded, she would consider and review each request for action as she received them. In the Rio case, too, she also reached out to us to make sure that Rio had fulfilled his legal obligations after she had given him a 30-day extension to comply with our records’ request.

That’s the kind of role model we need in that office, not only prosecuting violations of the open records law but setting an example and offering legal insights as to how to best further the interests of transparency.

All that is a good sign. But we’ll wait on a grade until we see a more definitive pattern of conduct with respect to openness and transparency, which is another way to say that, right now, she deserves the benefit of the doubt.