Monthly Archives: September 2019

A public hearing on a bill that would establish statewide rules for how police use body cameras and handle requests for access to videos is scheduled for next Tuesday.

The Senate Committee On Judiciary & Public Safety will hold a heading on the bill, SB50, at a meeting that starts at 10 a.m. at the Wisconsin State Capitol, Room 411S.

A Legislative Study Committee that drafted the bill voted 9-1 in support of the draft legislation. WISN-TV News Director Ben Hart and attorney James Friedman represented broadcasters and the media on the committee. Both voted in favor of the bill. The study committee included lawmakers who supported two different body camera bills during the last session. Neither were signed into law.

The committee-approved bill can be read here.

The bill, in part, maintains the Wisconsin’s current standard of public records being assumed accessible to the public, unless a records custodian rules against openness using the balancing test. The bill uses the balancing test to determine if video should be released, and asks records custodians to take into consideration the expectation privacy for anyone who appears in the video and the treatment of victims and minors. The bill also directs records custodians to use redaction where necessary to allow for a video to be released.

The bill also sets standards for record retention and mandates training for police departments that adopt the use of police body cameras.

Legislation on body cameras passed in the Assembly but was not brought up for a vote in the Senate before the end of the last session. The study committee included lawmakers who supported two different body camera bills in the last session.

Wisconsin’s own Jill Geisler has an international reputation as an educator and coach for journalists and newsrooms. On Sept. 11, 2001, she pulled out a notebook and took note of what she saw from broadcast journalists on that historic day.

She published those notes in 2002, and shared those note again today, on the anniversary of the terrorist attack.

You can read them here.

Portland anchor Maggie Vespa recently caught some flack from a viewer because she was wearing high-waisted pants. When she shared the criticism on social media, there was a significant response. She also had her own response which you can view here:

The Milwaukee Press Club is hosting an open house as part of “Doors Open Milwaukee.

The Newsroom Pub will be open to the public Saturday, Sept. 28 and Sunday, Sept. 29 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s located at 137 E. Wells Street.

The club’s collection of more than 1,200 signatures dates back to 1898 and includes key figures in journalism, entertainment, culture, sports and politics. The entire signature collection list is available here.

For more information about Doors Open Milwaukee, click here.

University of Florida educator Mindy McAdams is also the Knight Chair for Journalism Technologies and the Democratic Process and she’s known as an early adopter of new technology. So, when she’s got advice for advancing your journalism career, it’s worth your attention.

Advancing The Story recently published her eight essential skills for journalists in 2019.

It’s a great resource for students going into journalism and journalists looking to up their game for the next stage of their career.

If you’re interested in podcasting and you work in a newsroom, you’ve probably got some options for getting a podcast off the ground.

Poynter shared an article today about how to make a successful podcast pitch in a newsroom.

The article is broken into six easy-to-follow steps.

In May, as the state Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee considered a plan to spend far less on education than what Democrat Gov. Tony Evers proposed, Sheila Plotkin started filing public records requests.

Plotkin asked nearly every member of the Joint Finance Committee for correspondence they had received from Wisconsin residents about education funding.

All of the legislators Plotkin contacted provided responsive records for free. All, that is, except one: state Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), the panel’s co-chair, wanted Plotkin to pay $100.41 for location costs.

To Plotkin, this was a nonstarter.

“I’m a citizen on a fixed income and cannot afford $100.41,” said the 81-year-old retired educator from Madison. “I reject these charges. I think it is an attempt to price individual citizens out of” public records.

Similarly, Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council President Bill Lueders asked Nygren in June for communications about the state budget. Nygren had claimed that the Republicans’ budget bill was crafted based on public input, so Lueders asked to see what members of the public said.

Nygren agreed to produce the records — but only if Lueders paid an upfront search fee of $334.66. Lueders declined, noting that in numerous past requests no legislator had ever before charged him location fees.

Most recently, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) demanded that I pay nearly $200 in search fees. This was in response to a request I made in July for emails about proposed legislation to keep the names of lottery winners secret. I sent the same request to the bill’s other leading co-sponsors — state Rep. Gary Tauchen (R-Bonduel) and state Sen. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) — and they provided records at no charge. Wisconsin Lottery Director Cindy Polzin also responded to the same request and released records for free.

The hefty search fees from Nygren and Vos come after an appeals court blasted fellow GOP state Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) for refusing to release electronic records, in response to a lawsuit filed by Lueders in 2016. A three-judge panel held that records that exist in electronic format must be produced electronically upon request.

Based on that appellate ruling, Plotkin won a settlement in her own suit against 14 state lawmakers — including Krug and Vos — who had similarly refused to release emails in electronic format.

But now that legislators are barred from charging print copy fees for emails, it appears, some are finding new ways to impose significant search fees on requesters.

State law allows public officials to charge the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of locating records when this is $50 or more. But the law allows authorities to waive or reduce fees when doing so is in the public interest. Nygren and Vos chose not to do that.

There’s no question the public interest would have been served by waiving the fee for Plotkin, who regularly requests emails and correspondence that Wisconsinites send to lawmakers. She posts the findings, which often show that lawmakers vote against the wishes of those who contact them, on her website, we-the-irrelevant.org.

Open government is a proud tradition in Wisconsin. Charging requesters exorbitant fees frustrates that tradition and the spirit of the public records law. The citizens of this state deserve better from Nygren and Vos.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Jonathan Anderson is a former Wisconsin journalist and current Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota.