Open Records kerfuffle
[Assembly Speaker Robin] Vos, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Walker have said they were part of the discussions over the changes but have not specified who pushed for which parts of the plan.
Thousands of pages of emails and other documents released under the open records law in recent weeks shed some light on the origins of the proposal. The batch of records revealing the contact with Rabe came from Vos’ office.
Previously released records showed Vos made the request to the Legislative Reference Bureau to rewrite the law on legislative privilege.....
Gallagher, the attorney for the Legislative Reference Bureau, performed an extensive review of legislative privilege in September 2014 — two months before the fall elections and four months before the legislative session started. In emails to a Vos aide, he said he did the work for continuing legal education credit.
“This office had nothing to do with the study that the LRB did,” Vos spokeswoman Kit Beyer said Wednesday.
MADISON — Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was the state lawmaker who drafted a proposal that would have gutted Wisconsin’s open records law and protected legislators from having to release documents currently available, according to documents released to The Associated Press on Thursday....
....”At the time of the email you reference, the concepts being discussed by Assembly Leadership were simple: Returning legislative powers ceded to the Executive Branch, and the idea that the Legislature should be able to set its own common sense policies on open records and retention of drafting files,” Beyer wrote. “The intention was to study the practices around the country and update our policies to catch up with advances in technology and to protect constituents.”
Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick has previously said that legislative leaders told the governor’s office they wanted to make changes in the open records law and Walker’s staff provided input. She said Walker intended to “encourage a deliberative process” to develop policy and legislation.
Patrick did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Thursday.
The Center for Media and Democracy is suing Walker’s office for drafting files surrounding his budget proposal to eliminate the Wisconsin Idea — the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement. Walker argues that the files are part of the deliberative process and should be kept private, an exemption not currently allowed under state law.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Idea
“The Wisconsin Idea is the policy developed in the American state of Wisconsin that fosters public universities’ contributions to the state: “to the government in the forms of serving in office, offering advice about public policy, providing information and exercising technical skill, and to the citizens in the forms of doing research directed at solving problems that are important to the state and conducting outreach activities”. A second facet of the philosophy is the effort “to ensure well-constructed legislation aimed at benefiting the greatest number of people”. During the Progressive Era, proponents of the Wisconsin Idea saw the state as “the laboratory for democracy”, resulting in legislation that served as a model for other states and the federal government. - politics, education, media.
Figures don’t lie but liars can figure.
Re: Wisconsin economy and job growth being compared to surrounding states (prefer to use Democrat talking points).
Some facts that they don’t want to take into account:
Gov Walker continues to roll back state dept budgets (which has shrunk those jobs) ie DLM, Sec of State, etc; he’s cut Univ Wis budget/taken tenure out of the state constitution (which has shrunk those jobs).
Unemployment went from 8% to 4% - number of new employed lower because already higher than other states.
Bush likes to compare FL employment when he was governor - 1999 to 2007 BEFORE the bust.
The EPA, energy sector, Obamacare and other federal dictates and regulatory oversight has depressed the economy and slowed hiring.
Wisconsin’s pension plan is fully funded.
Wisconsin continues to lower property taxes.
Walker’s policies are good examples of how he intends to roll back government on the federal level and return many of these decisions to the local and state level.