By Sen. Chris Larson, for the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council
They say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, but when it comes to public records, the state Legislature doesn’t seem to believe in this principle.
In Wisconsin, cities, police and fire departments, state agencies, and even the governor’s office are required to retain public records and make these available to the public. For example, emails generated by staff in the Department of Justice must be retained for three years from the date of creation and then transferred to the Wisconsin Historical Society or UW-Madison archives.
For most of our state’s history, these rules also applied to those who wrote the laws.
But decades ago, when it wrote the law, the Legislature decided to exempt itself from having to retain most records. This exemption means the state’s 99 representatives and 33 senators can simply destroy or delete any records in their possession that they would like to shield from public scrutiny.
This quirk in the law has been used by some legislators to protect constituents’ personal information, and by others to hide their communications with corporate interest groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. And I know that some of my colleagues in the Senate make it a point to delete their calendars daily.
Double standard unacceptable
For a state with a rich history of transparency and with technological advancement, this double standard is no longer acceptable. State lawmakers should have to comply with the same record-keeping standard they require for others.
Unfortunately, we have seen transparency slide in the opposite direction in recent years. In 2015, Republican lawmakers passed a budget “999 motion” to limit what records they needed to provide. It was removed from the budget only after public outcry. The Legislature has also limited what the public can know about campaign contributors.
As I recently told a Milwaukee TV station, I believe that the ability of lawmakers to destroy records is an invitation to corruption, Already, we have seen that some lawmakers have been destroying the emails they received urging them to vote against the package of lame-duck bills they passed in December.
Our public tax dollars pay for all of the functions the lawmakers perform. The public has a right to see records that show who is exerting influence over these allocations.
Easy fix available
The fix is easy. We can simply pass a law to delete the legislative exemption to record keeping and bring the state Legislature in line with the Public Records Management and Preservation Program.
This coming legislative session, I will reintroduce a bill I co-authored in 2011 with former state Senators Tim Cullen and Jim Holperin to do away with this outdated exemption. When this bill was last introduced, legislative Republicans refused even to give it a public hearing.
Unfortunately, those in power rarely give it up willingly. What’s needed is a loud and unified public demanding that lawmakers’ records be kept safe and available upon request.
There’s a saying that sums all this up nicely: “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
There should not be 132 personal standards for record keeping in the Wisconsin Legislature; there should be only one standard of transparency.
“Your Right to Know” is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson represents Wisconsin’s 7th Senate District and is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Education. He is not a member of the Freedom of Information Council.
Note: this is not the first time the Wisconsin FoIC has distributed a column written by a member of the state Legislature. In the past, it has distributed “Your Right to Know” columns written by state Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. John Gard. Darling (R-River Hills) has represented the 8th District in the Senate since 1993 and served in the Assembly from 1990 through 1993. She has been a member of the Joint Finance Committee since 2000. Gard was a Republican member of the Assembly from 1987 to 2007 and served as its Speaker from 2003 to 2007.