Education Action Group Sues Open Government Hypocrite Dane Co. (WI) DA Ismael Ozanne

Townhall.com ^ | Juine 23, 2011 | Kyle Olsen

[Kaslin]

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne sued the Wisconsin legislature over the passage of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill, citing government transparency issues. He argued that a legislative committee did not post proper notice of its meeting before voting on the legislation.

“Transparency in government is of the utmost importance. It's the foundation that builds communities trust in representatives and government,” Ozanne was quoted as saying at the time.

But Ozanne does not operate his own office by those same standards.

Several weeks ago, Education Action Group submitted two Open Records requests – to Ozanne and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk – seeking copies of their email communications that pertained to their efforts to block the budget repair bill.

Falk’s successor, Joseph Parisi, filled the request in a timely and legal manner and provided the public records. Ozanne didn’t even bother to acknowledge our request.

After sending another letter reminding Ozanneof the request, EAG took the dramatic step of beginning the process of filing suit. We not only want access to the records that we requested, but reimbursement for legal costs that were spent trying to get Mr. Ozanne to comply with state open records laws.

This is not something we wanted to do. We do not want to spend our hard-earned resources this way. But to have a DA who postures as a crusader for open government display an utter disregard for our simple legal request could not go unanswered.

Ozanne needs to operate his own office by the standard he set for the state legislature. Our lawsuit intends to ensure that he, in fact, does that.

[sergeantdave]

The state open meetings law - and every state has one - is a great way to ensnare liberals in controversy. With the open meetings law, you can sue your local liberal politician. Make him pay your legal expenses. Start recalls to throw him out of office. And throw him in jail for multiple violations of the open meetings law.

And believe me, liberal politcians are always meeting in secret in violation of open meetings laws.

[The4thHorseman]

I’m always amazed to hear about government officials ignoring these requests.

I work in a State government office and one of my duties is to handle all Public Records Act requests that come to us (we’re in California).

We get quite a few of them because we deal with issues that often end up in lawsuits being filed (not against us but against the federal agencies we’re monitoring), and we would never dream of ignoring those requests.

Instead, we basically drop everything to get the response out as quickly as possible (and we spend a good amount of time ensuring that our response is thorough and we haven’t missed a thing being requested).

Then again, we don’t have anything to hide...