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All public employees in Wisconsin must retain records, per the state’s open records law. Except one group. The ones who wrote that law.

State legislators have exempted themselves from the retention portion of the law. Some want to change that.

“The public should not have to worry about legislators having secret conversations or deleting emails,” said state Rep. Clinton Anderson, D-Beloit, who is introducing a bill that would close this loophole despite the fact that the state Assembly adjourned last month for the rest of the year.

Anderson released the bill Monday because it is the start of Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

In Wisconsin, state legislators must comply with a records request, but if they have destroyed the record, they have nothing to send.

“Obviously, it’s troubling,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. “It allows legislators to make things go away that they would rather not see the light of day.”

State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told the Wisconsin Examiner in 2021 that his office “frequently deletes emails during the normal course of business each day.”

And he’s not the only one.

“My office does not delete records on principle, and we should make sure every elected official is held to that same standard,” Anderson said.

In 2025, Gov. Tony Evers stepped in to close this loophole – his 2025 budget proposal included a measure to “remove the Legislature’s exemption from open records law by requiring that records and correspondence of any member of the Legislature be included in a definition of a public record to provide greater transparency for the people of Wisconsin.” The proposal also would have allocated funds and opened a full-time position with the Legislative Technology Services Bureau to carry out this new requirement. But the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee removed it from the final budget.

State Sen. Chris Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee, has introduced bills to close that exemption for state legislators multiple times and is doing so again in the Senate this week in tandem with Anderson.

Before his election to the state Senate in 2010, Larson served on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. As a public official, he had to maintain all his records there and assumed the same when he arrived in the Legislature.

But as his email inbox filled up and ran low on space, Larson said he was told by IT staff to simply delete old messages.

“People often wonder why so many wildly popular policies go session after session without a vote or even a public hearing, while special interest slop rises to the top of the agenda,” said Justin Bielinski, Larson’s spokesman. “The Wisconsin Legislature’s exemption from record retention requirements creates a perverse incentive to do the people’s business in secret. If lawmakers aren’t going to be responsive to their constituents’ needs, the least we can do is allow people to find out who they are listening to, and whose voices they choose to ignore.”

Larson’s bills to close the loophole have been ignored by Republicans who control the Legislature, he said. The majority party generally pays little attention to bills from the minority.

But the fact the Wisconsin Legislature is even subject to the open records law, albeit with a caveat, makes it one of the more transparent states. Nearly a quarter of all states — 12 in total — do not even allow records from the Legislature to be accessed by the public, according to a study from The Journal of Civic Information. Congress has also excluded itself from open records requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The exemption for legislators here “completely undermines Wisconsin’s public records law and the ability for citizens to trust their Legislature,” said David Cuillier, director of the University of Florida’s Brechner Freedom of Information Project. “It’s really quite bizarre and an outlier in the United States. The right thing to do is remove it and restore accountability and credibility to the institution.”

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported newsroom in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A loophole lets Wisconsin lawmakers delete public records is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A deputy known for making a large number of arrests, but who had a history of unreliability in his reports and court testimony, resigned from the Waushara County Sheriff’s Office in early December.

Scott Schaut had worked for the sheriff’s office since 2018 and was making about $34 per hour, according to county administration.

After The Badger Project requested records of his disciplinary record in September, Scott Schaut resigned a few days later from his leadership position as the night shift sergeant, dropping himself down to a patrol deputy. In November, The Badger Project published a story about Schaut’s work history, including a performance improvement plan he had been under, and at least two documented instances of the officer’s changing testimony led to a dismissal of criminal charges.

“After careful consideration, I have decided that it is best for me to move on,” he wrote in his resignation letter, which The Badger Project obtained from the county via a records request. “The current direction and internal environment of the department no longer align with what I believe is necessary for me to be successful in my role. For that reason, I feel it is in everyone’s best interest for me to step away at this time.”

The Waushara County Sheriff’s Office has been under great scrutiny in recent months, as an investigation from The Badger Project found that Sheriff Wally Zuehlke had collected more than $20,000 in stipends for his K9 after quitting the law enforcement trainings with the dog. The county board voted to force Zuehkle to repay that sum plus interest.

Another investigation by The Badger Project found the sheriff’s office promoted a deputy who had been sending and requesting lewd photos to and from officers in the department. That deputy resigned after The Badger Project requested his records.

And the sheriff’s office’s second-in-command, Chief Deputy Jim Lietz, resigned in October after pressure from citizen journalist Sam Wood, who makes online videos watched by thousands in the county and beyond, regarding his handling of the lewd photo investigation and other accusations.

Schaut had previously been on a performance improvement plan with the department, during which he conducted what may have been an illegal search, documents from the plan note.

Wood had also been criticizing Schaut in his recent videos, derisively calling him “Schnauzer” due to his aggressive and frequent searches for drugs.

But documents show that, on at least a couple occasions, Schaut failed to follow department policy, and the law, when executing searches.

Before conducting a house check in the village of Coloma in April, Schaut and other deputies received verbal permission from a caller to ensure no person was in the home. But body camera video showed Schaut looking in boxes, the refrigerator and a washing machine, areas too small for a person to hide, according to a sheriff’s office report.

For his breaking of department policy, the top administration of the sheriff’s office decided Schaut would be penalized with two unpaid days off, Lietz wrote in the report.

Upon Schaut’s resignation from the sergeant’s position, Lt. Stacy Vaccaro ended the improvement plan.

“Overall, Sgt. Schaut’s performance has been mediocre without much change,” Vaccaro wrote in the final report. “After speaking with Schaut about concerns or issues, he would acknowledge his understanding, improve for a short period of time, and then regress back.”

Schaut, Vaccaro and Zuehlke did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Schaut also had trouble with reliability in his police work in other documented instances.

In a case from 2024, Schaut reported receiving consent to enter a man’s home, in which he found drug paraphernalia. However, when a judge asked Schaut to note on an audio recording where he had received that consent, the officer said he could not, according to the court transcript. That led to the judge dismissing the paraphernalia charge because Schaut had not obtained consent and had no warrant.

In another case involving underage drinking in 2023, Waushara County District Attorney Matthew Leusink and Assistant District Attorney Joshua Zamzow alerted the court that Schaut had misremembered facts during his testimony, leading to the dismissal of a citation.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Waushara County deputy quits sheriff’s office following The Badger Project’s investigation is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In the national war for affordable housing, a familiar battle is raging in Richland Center, a little city in the Driftless Area that’s surrounded by wilderness and farm fields.

A move to put duplexes on a six-acre village green has pitted some residents against their city government.

“It’s the soccer field, it’s the picnic field, it’s the place where everybody goes,” said Jeri Rust, who grew up in town and now splits time between Richland Center and Arizona.

But “the city needs housing, and we have before us a proposal that would be the envy of any other community,” Richland County Board Chair David Turk said at a September city council meeting. 

Since 2017, the average home price in Richland Center has increased from about $102,000 to $180,000, a 76% change, according to Zillow, the real estate marketplace. 

Stori Field is the “crown jewel” of the neighborhood, said Greg Dettmann, a resident who grew up in the city and lives across the street. 

The field is named for teacher and coach Dave Stori, who revived the high school’s track team in the 1940s. For decades, Stori Field hosted athletic practices and P.E. classes.

“I threw up more than once on that field,” Dettmann, 74, joked about his own time exercising on the field as a kid. “You can’t get green spaces back once they’re gone.”

But Richland Center has between three and six times more parkland than what the National Recreation and Park Association recommends for the city’s population, city attorney Michael Windle estimated. And there are other venues for recreation around the city, he said.

It’s a common fight across the country as residents resist new housing to keep their neighborhoods from changing.

“When you say it’s easy to find places to build, no, it isn’t,” Mayor Todd Coppernoll said at a September city council meeting. “We don’t have adequate housing stock at any income level, in my opinion.” 

Richland Center, like many communities, is struggling to provide affordable housing, especially for older people, as its population ages and the number of small home builders declines, according to a Richland County analysis.

The community’s median income is lagging behind its median home value, and “there is not enough affordable housing,” according to a Richland Center study from 2024. 

The city has struggled to find companies to build. When one developer, Enke Properties, zeroed in on Stori Field and agreed to cover the costs for major expenses like utilities, sidewalks and street lights, the city jumped at the offer. On top of the additional housing, the 16-unit development would also generate about $100,000 in annual tax revenue to be split among the city, county and school district, Richland Center city officials estimate. 

The city greenlit the sale of Stori Field on Oct. 7. In response, but before the transfer officially went through, residents submitted a petition with nearly 700 resident signatures asking the city to prohibit any sale without the voters’ consent. Richland Center has a population of about 5,000 people.

On Nov. 13, the same day the clerk certified most of the signatures, the city rejected the petition, saying it omitted necessary language. The city officially sold the land for $1 to the developer the same day. 

“PR-wise, I think they fell on their face,” Mary Collins, a resident of Richland Center and the chair of the Richland County Democratic Party, said of city officials.

But “from a legal perspective, I’m not sure that there’s anything stopping the city in this instance,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

On Nov. 21 residents submitted a second petition, which the city acknowledged but says conflicts with the Oct. 7 ordinance it passed authorizing the sale.

In Wisconsin, Clinger said, a direct legislation attempt, in this case the residents’ petition, can’t be used to pass a city ordinance that clearly conflicts with an existing city ordinance. But the city’s actions could certainly have political consequences in future local elections, he noted.

Shelly Dobbs, another leader in the push to protect Stori Field who has also taken the issue to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said her citizen group is considering legal action. 

But the city’s focus on Stori Field has angered some who feel there are opportunities for development elsewhere. The city says it is considering more options in addition to Stori Field.

Ellen Kellar Evans owns two rental properties near Stori Field with her husband and had been working to build 19 single-family homes in the city. She said Richland Center even offered them a $1.5 million federal grant for the project. But she said the city’s unrealistic deadlines and the ire she feels about the Stori Field project have changed things.

“We don’t think we can trust them anymore to make good decisions,” she said.

The city has since pulled the grant.

Residents have repeatedly pointed to the decommissioned University of Wisconsin campus owned by the county as an alternative to Stori Field. In response, the mayor asked Turk, the county board chair, to give an update on the campus at a special meeting Sept. 24.

“The campus is a big chunk of land,” Turk said. “Is it ready to be developed? No.”

But in his emails to The Badger Project, Windle referenced a Nov. 19 presentation the city gave at a county meeting about a proposed subdivision on the campus.

“We feel like we were fooled by thinking that couldn’t be available for years,” Kellar Evans said. “I’m very confused, myself, and I think everyone else is. We just don’t understand.” 

The campus project, Windle said, would be in addition to Stori Field. 

“At this time,” Windle said, “Stori Field is the sole and exclusive property of Enke Properties, LLC.”

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Richland Center residents fight to spare park from city’s affordable housing plans is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.