By Bill Lueders, for the Wisconsin FoI Council
Last January, a person involved in local emergency management asked the Office of Open Government, part of the state Justice Department, whether emergency preparedness coalitions run by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) are subject to the state’s open meetings and open records laws.
The answer to this question, it turns out, is yes. These laws apply to the state’s seven Wisconsin Regional Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalitions, critical entities in the age of COVID-19. This means their meetings must be noticed and open to the public.
But arriving at this answer took nearly a year, which should not have happened.
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