Governor Tony Evers' office is denying open records requests for his emails. Transparency advocates say they're worried about the erosion of the public's right to know. 1/ fox6now.com/2019/11/10/den…
Why care about emails? Government emails help track who is making decisions about tax dollars, how public employees make those decisions, and who has influence over the process. 2/
That’s why we frequently do spot checks on government employee emails. This spot check uncovered Wisconsin state lawmakers using their personal email addresses for government business (a move that could compromise transparency and cyber security). 3/ fox6now.com/2019/01/13/sec…
Governor Evers' attorney said email requests will be denied if they do not contain search terms or wording she can turn into search terms (requests for emails about the budget or containing the word "agriculture," for example). 4/
But requests for all emails over a specific time frame, no matter how short, will be denied. It got to the point where the Gov’s Office denied our request for his emails from just one day. Evers’ Dept of Veterans Affairs denied a request for emails from 3 hours. 5/
"It turns public records requests into a guessing game,"open records attorney April Barker said,pointing out that you miss crucial information if you need to know what is in the emails before seeing them. “You don’t know what you don’t know, so you don’t know what to ask for.” 6/
We also showed the Gov’s denial letters to @WisFOIC Pres. @billlueders, who said: “It looks to me like the office is trying to parse the language of the law in order to not give you records. What it should be doing is to try to find some reason to say yes to your request." 7/
When Governor Evers’ staff wouldn’t comment on the story, we showed up at a press conference and asked Governor Evers himself. You can watch that interaction here 8/: fox6now.com/2019/11/10/den…
The Governor said he has no problems turning over the one day of his emails that we asked for and said the public should be able to see them. But his staff is still refusing to turn them over. 9/
A lot of this comes down to an argument over the definition of the word “or.” Seriously. You can read about it here 10/: fox6now.com/2019/11/10/den…
And before the “whataboutism” starts, @billlueders points out Evers isn’t significantly better/worse than Walker on open records. And the Legislature has its own issues (see below). But that doesn’t mean we ignore how Governor Evers responds. 11/ google.com/amp/s/fox6now.…
We do a lot of stories about public records because those are your receipts; you can’t know what government is really up to without them. So when anyone blocks us from seeing those records, we take notice. 12/12
