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In a 2007 ruling known as Zellner v. Cedarburg School District, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared that because public school teachers “are entrusted with the responsibility of teaching children,” the public has a clear right to know about allegations of misconduct against educators.

I wonder what the justices would think of a school district trying to charge $5,600 for this information. Or $40,000. Or $245,000.

Those were among the actual cost estimates that Wisconsin school districts provided when my paper, the Cap Times, asked for public records about teachers accused of sexual misconduct.

Such misconduct is a more pervasive problem in schools than you might think. An estimated one in 10 students experiences sexual harassment or assault from an educator during their K-12 schooling, according to one comprehensive case study in 2004. In Wisconsin, that rate would amount to more than 93,000 school children based on last year’s private and public school statewide enrollment.

But there is no statewide comprehensive data tracking of such allegations, so the Cap Times set out to determine how often educators are investigated for sexual misconduct toward students, and how allegations to this effect are handled.

For a report to be published later this month, the Cap Times sought employee investigation records, reprimands and resignation agreements over the last eight years from districts across Wisconsin.

The responses took the newspaper by surprise. I’m not referring to the actual records — which, when the Cap Times eventually received them, were shocking in other ways. What first stunned us were the amounts the districts demanded just to look for these documents.

The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District outside of Madison put the upfront cost of locating these records at $40,000. Sheboygan wanted $18,000, Oshkosh wanted $6,600, Appleton wanted $5,600, and Madison wanted $4,500.

Leading the pack was the Janesville School District, which asked for $245,000. The district has 9,400 students and roughly 1,500 employees, making it the ninth largest district in the state. Milwaukee Public Schools, the largest school district in the state at 66,000 students, quoted the Cap Times about $1,100 for the exact same records request. MPS also has six times more employees, meaning more records to search.

After a Cap Times reporter spoke on the phone with Janesville assistant superintendent Scott Garner, this charge disappeared. For some of the districts, the newspaper had to identify names of specific teachers and narrow the scope of its requests to get a reasonable cost estimate. For others, including Madison, we still have not received records despite our attempts to make their searches easier.

The suspicion remains that the initial price tags from some of these districts were not based on the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of locating these records, as the Open Records Law allows, but on a desire to make these requests go away.

Then there were school districts, including Racine and Waukesha, where officials said they couldn’t fulfill the request at all because it would be too burdensome.

Refusing to provide this information, or charging prohibitive fees for such records, is antithetical to school districts’ legal duty — and moral obligation — of transparency. 

Educators have unique access to children and an enormous amount of responsibility for their safety at school. By far the majority can be trusted with those responsibilities. But in some cases that trust is violated — as in the state Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling, involving an educator who was viewing adult websites on his school computer.

As the court said in its decision, “The public has an interest in knowing about such allegations of teacher misconduct and how they are handled.”

And, I would add, members of the public shouldn’t have to take out a loan to get this information.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Council secretary Mark Treinen (mtreinen@captimes.com) is editor of the Cap Times in Madison.

Your Right to Know: Costs shouldn’t be used to deter records requests 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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As homelessness grows across Wisconsin, social service agencies are feeling a crunch. The federal government is slashing funding for tackling the problem, and state lawmakers aren’t helping much either. 

Reporters for Wisconsin Watch, the nonprofit news organization for which I work, unpacked those challenges in a mid-July story. They noted the Legislature’s budget writing committee rejected a $24 million proposal by Gov. Tony Evers to boost funding for homelessness support services and shelter operations. 

The reason? Committee leaders won’t say. 

The 2,358-word story included perspectives of multiple service providers and policy experts, but the lawmakers were conspicuously absent. My colleagues sent multiple requests for comment to four members of the committee, including its two co-chairs. One declined an interview request. The others did not reply.

The silence leaves the public guessing. 

Do the lawmakers disagree on the scope of the problem? Do they think money can be better spent on other issues? How much is just politics between a Republican-controlled committee and a Democratic governor? 

We don’t know because they won’t tell us.

It’s hard to address homelessness — or any complex challenge —  if we don’t even know where leaders stand.

Unfortunately, independent journalists are growing accustomed to being ignored. In a trend spanning multiple levels of government and political parties, public officials are increasingly avoiding answering inconvenient questions about matters of public concern. They’re sending generic statements instead of agreeing to interviews that are more likely to yield clarity. That’s if they respond at all. 

It’s happening in Wisconsin and beyond.

“Patterns of media evasion and selective engagement have become the norm for many newsmakers. They may work with media that are friendly to or aligned with the source’s views, resulting in little to no accountability questions or pushback,” states a 2024 Poynter Institute report. “Many sources who once engaged with reporters, even if grudgingly, have become masters of media avoidance.” 

Such tactics are less harmful to journalists than they are to constituents. We ask questions on behalf of the public — not to satisfy our own curiosities. Ignoring us is ignoring the public. 

In Wisconsin, the silence means less information on everything from state prison staffing shortages to the politics behind state conservation funding or dormant city initiatives in Milwaukee. 

Earlier this year, a McFarland man who arrived three years ago from Cuba attended what he thought would be the first hearing in his asylum case —  after following steps laid out by the federal government. Instead, a judge dismissed Miguel Jerez Robles’ case and agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him.

“He had everything in order, and he was arbitrarily arrested and placed in expedited removal when he doesn’t qualify to be in expedited removal,” his attorney told the Capital Times and Wisconsin Watch. 

The news outlets reached out to ICE for comment. It did not respond. A month after his arrest, the man was released, still with no explanation. 

Thankfully, such stonewalling is not universal. Some officials still value transparency, agreeing to interviews that help the public understand their actions. It’s probably not always easy. Engaging with journalists takes time and energy, and requests may flow in with tight deadlines.

But their constituents are better off for it.

While writing this column, I emailed the four lawmakers who did not comment during Wisconsin Watch’s homelessness reporting in July: Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam; Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green; Sen. Romaine Robert Quinn, R-Birchwood; and Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto. I offered a fresh chance to discuss their vote and share their perspectives on receiving media requests. 

None of them responded. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Council member Jim Malewitz is managing editor of Wisconsin Watch.

Your Right to Know: ‘No comment’ is no help to the public 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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This month, for the first time in 30 years, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is without Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. It is also without one of its most consistent advocates for transparency in government. 

Bradley served three 10-year terms on the court, the last of which expired July 31. During this time, she wrote nearly 600 opinions, including quite a few that contained important interpretations of Wisconsin’s open records and meetings laws.

In a 1996 opinion, Bradley rejected the argument that open records and meetings lawsuits had to be preceded by 120 days notice. Bradley, writing for a unanimous court, said the laws require “timely access to the affairs of government.” 

In 2007, Bradley’s majority opinion in Buswell v. Tomah Area School District strengthened the public notice requirements of the state’s open meetings law. That case required meeting notices to be more specific about the subject matter of topics to be discussed, to better inform the public. 

In another majority opinion in 2008, Bradley provided some clarity as to when “quasi-governmental corporations” are subject to the open meetings law. In that case, the Beaver Dam city economic development office had closed, then was immediately replaced by a private corporation that continued to use city offices and receive tax dollars. Bradley’s opinion concluded that because the corporation still resembled the government in function, purpose and effect, it had to follow the laws.

Not every opinion written by Bradley was for the majority. In 2017, she dissented from a decision to exempt from disclosure unredacted immigration detainer forms sent by the Milwaukee County jail to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her opinion methodically rejected the county’s arguments in favor of redaction, arguing that “continuous ‘chipping away’ has substantially gutted Wisconsin’s commitment to open government.” 

Just one year later, Bradley dissented again, this time from an opinion that denied a public union’s request for certification forms. “The unfounded speculation that the records might be used for improper purposes,” she wrote, “does not outweigh the strong public interest in opening the records to inspection.”

Regardless of whether Bradley wrote a majority, dissenting or concurring opinion, she always emphasized the strong public policy in favor of open government set forth in Wisconsin’s open records and open meetings laws. And she condemned decisions that paid only “lip service” to these principles, calling them “all hat and no cattle.” 

Bradley even had occasion to apply open government principles to the Wisconsin Supreme Court itself. In 2012, she opposed its 4-3 decision to close some of the court’s rules and operations conferences to the public. As reported by Wisconsin Watch at the time, Bradley questioned the change, asking, “What is the good public policy reason to exclude the public from this process? I can’t think of any.” 

In 2017, Bradley was one of two justices who voted against closing all such conferences. (Fortunately, in 2023, a newly constituted court decided to reopen its conferences, with Bradley in the majority.)

Bradley told Wisconsin Lawyer magazine that she intends to stay engaged with organizations that support law and civics education. Her dedication to open government in these endeavors should serve her well, as it has the citizens of Wisconsin for three decades.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Christa Westerberg is the council’s vice president and a partner at the Pines Bach law firm in Madison. Heather Kuebel contributed research to this column.

Your Right to Know: Ann Walsh Bradley and the cause of openness 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.