Reading Time: 3 minutes A horrific scene played out in February in an apartment complex in Middleton, a Madison suburb. A woman and her two young children had died. The tight-knit community mourned for this family as its members asked: How could this happen?  Several days after the shootings, Middleton police released a statement saying the mother had killed her two children and shot the children’s father before taking her own life. The crime raised questions about mental health issues and whether there had been warning signs in the woman’s troubled life. To try to give the public more in ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes For the 18th straight year, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is recognizing outstanding efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government through its Openness in Government awards, or Opees. The awards are being presented as part of national Sunshine Week, March 10 to 16. Winners have been invited to claim their award at the Wisconsin Openness Awards Dinner in Madison on March 14, part of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s annual convention. Awards are being given this year in six categories. The winners are: Public Openness Awar ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes You’ve already paid for them. They’re yours. But if you want to see the public records that show what your government is doing, some state lawmakers want you to pay again — this time, for redactions. That’s right. They want you to pay more to get less. Currently, the state’s Open Records Law allows public officials to charge only for the “actual, necessary, and direct cost” of copying, mailing and in some cases locating public records. Senate Bill 789, which the Wisconsin Senate recently passed, barely more than a month after it was introduced, would allow law enfo ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Law enforcement officers in Winnebago County shot three people in 2023, one fatally. And while we know the names of the people shot, the identities of those who pulled the trigger remain secret. The fatal shooting, on Aug. 2, was of an armed 37-year-old man at a Neenah gas station by an Outagamie County sheriff’s deputy and an Appleton police officer, both members of the Lake Winnebago Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a narcotics enforcement unit. The two nonfatal shootings, on March 17 and June 29, involved Oshkosh police officers. Even after in ..read more

Reading Time: 11 minutes Originally published by The Markup. During the second half of our junior year of high school, we were shocked to learn about an algorithm called the Dropout Early Warning System (DEWS) that our home state of Wisconsin had been using to predict future dropouts. As Black students, who make up nine percent of the public school student body statewide, it felt wrong that factors like the color of our skin contributed to whether we’d be labeled as “high risk” of dropping out — especially because the algorithm is often wrong. Twice a year, Wisconsin public schools receive a l ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes About a year ago, Simon Mehring came home from a high school journalism conference with an idea. Mehring, now a junior at Stoughton High School, had learned about an Illinois law that protects student media from censorship. He also found out that Wisconsin doesn’t have such a law. So, armed with model legislation from the Student Press Law Center, he raised the issue with state legislators, in conversations that lasted through the school year and into the summer. Larry Gallup Mehring, in an interview, said he spoke several times with Rep. Dave M ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes On Oct. 9, 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held a lively, 35-minute discussion on whether to allow the deletion of certain eviction records from Wisconsin’s online court records system. I’ll get to that topic in a moment; what’s remarkable is that we were able to witness this discussion at all. In 2012, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to close its administrative conferences.  These are conferences where the court considers changes to rules that affect the court system, procedures used in civil and criminal matters, and ethics rules for attorneys and judge ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes In mid-August, in my role as a press advocate, I received a call from the owner of a small, vibrant, online community newspaper who was worried about publishing a story that reflected poorly on a local business. The paper had checked and rechecked its facts and gave the business repeated opportunities to comment. But still, the newspaper owner was afraid of being sued. I urged the owner to publish, despite the risk; the article did run, thankfully without legal repercussions. But the risk is real: During this very same week, the New York Times reported on a small digita ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes As part of doing business, government agencies often maintain contact lists or distribution lists. These days those are typically email addresses, but they also can contain physical addresses or even phone numbers.  Your state legislator probably has a list of email addresses to send newsletters. Your local governmental units might have multiple lists for different purposes —  phone numbers to call for volunteers, mailing addresses to send recreation department brochures, or email addresses to send weekly announcements. Tom Kamenick is the president and found ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes In recent years, public schools in Wisconsin and across the country have come under intense scrutiny. At issue are some of the most politically engaging, high-stakes issues of our time: what we teach children about race, gender and identity; how we police the line between free speech and anti-discrimination law; and the role of parents in shaping their childrens’ world view. These are political questions, but they are also highly personal, reaching into the most intimate details of children’s and families’ lives. That puts schools in a significant bind. On the one hand ..read more