Open records scandal- the plot thickens

The debate over the increasingly-hated gutting of the state's open records law by the Joint Finance Committee this week is not just anger from Wisconsinites of all stripes at what is clearly an attempt to shield elected officials from the public that pays their salaries. There's also a question of "who gave the order?" as none of the 12 Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee that voted for that pile of garbage is saying that he or she was the one who formally put that into the session-ending 999 provision. However, we are starting to get some clues, and some fingers seem to be pointing directly up the Capitol's steps to Governor Scott Walker's office.

Take a look at this article from longtime Madison Capitol reporter Dee Hall, who now heads the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Hall reviews what the JFC's proposal would do, and talks to various state politicos that note the similarities between the bill's attempt to use "the deliberative process" as a reason to deny open records requests, and Walker's office using a similar excuses to avoid giving out documents during this budget, including those related to the rewrite of the University of Wisconsin System's mission statement and the literal removal of the Wisconsin Idea from state doctrine. And back in February, Walker blamed a "drafting error" for the change before open records revealed the order to be coming from the top.

Although Walker initially denied any involvement, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other outlets used the state open records law to confirm that the governor’s office was behind the effort to rewrite the mission statement.

“Governor Walker’s office acted outside Wisconsin’s open records law in denying our basic request to see communications that were behind removing the ‘Wisconsin Idea’ from our statutes,” {writer for The Progessive] Jud Lounsbury said in an email. “So we took them to court. Instead of following the law, they’ve decided to change the law.”

Christa Westerberg, vice president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, noted similarities between Walker’s invocation of a deliberative process exemption in recent months and the proposal in the “Motion 999” amendment to the state budget passed Thursday.

“It’s strangely coincidental that we’re seeing the deliberative process exemption in the budget within months of the Governor’s office and Department of Administration attempting a similar exemption in recent (open records) responses,” said Westerberg, a Madison attorney who also is legal counsel for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Funny how that stuff works, doesn't it? The JFC member who put that language into the 999 amendment had just the same idea. Imagine that!

Two tweets yesterday from Dem members of the Joint Finance Committee also add to this intrigue over whether Walker's office is the one that wanted the change.

JFC GOP made it clear to us that @GovWalker signed off on motions INCLUDING OPEN RECORDS CHANGES after crossing out what he'd veto #opengov

— Gordon Hintz (@GordonHintz) July 3, 2015

And State Sen. Jon Erpenbach seems to back up Hintz's claim.

.great story. I know Walker was involved. He told GOP finance members he would sign it before they voted. #wibudget http://t.co/TLJFSjJnrw

— Jon Erpenbach (@JonErpenbach) July 4, 2015

The silence, blubbering and backtracking from GOP members of the JFC is also telling- no one seems to want to own this, which sure would be the act of someone who was doing this move for someone else. Now why they want to risk their own re-election chances in 2016 by signing onto this fascist pile of crap is beyond me, but maybe these people are so far in to the RW bubble that they think they can get away with almost anything. Or they and the Governor's office are guilty as hell of criminal corruption and are trying desperately to cover it up by any means necessary (constitutional or otherwise).

Keep your ear to the ground, because there's a whole lot more to come as these guys try to figure out what to do with this as the full Assembly and Senate debate the state budget in the next couple of weeks. Maybe this move resembles what has been described in graphics as a "hairy hand" - a distraction from the other ridiculous and regressive crap in this budget. But given that even the Walker cheerleader and Journal-Sentinel managing editor George Stanley is expressing his blistering disagreement with this, it would seem to be a very stupid tactic.

Somehow, I don't think this is what the "'Murican" WisGOP party wanted to be talking about as they appeared in their communities' 4th of July parades, but they did it to themselves, either through following orders from the Governor's office, or through their own anti-democratic leanings. And I don't feel in any way sorry for them.