Wisconsin: Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has declared war on the state’s open records standard. [View all]

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http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/editorial/j-b-van-hollen-attacks-public-s-right-to-know/article_a0816caa-a9db-572b-a138-d0e19d1d528e.html#_=_

J.B. Van Hollen attacks public's right to know

His Department of Justice is arguing that legislators are immune from lawsuits demanding that they turn over records that the public has a clearly defined right to review. If the attorney general’s lawless stance is accepted as the new normal in Gov. Scott Walker’s increasingly authoritarian Wisconsin, citizens would lose their right to demand information about what legislators are doing in their name and with their tax dollars. And the basic premises of democratic governance would be shredded.

Those premises are stated in the Wisconsin Constitution, which declares that “governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is impossible for the governed to give their consent if they cannot get answers to basic questions about what legislators are doing in their official capacity.

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But Van Hollen is now arguing that state Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, need not follow the rules because she is immune when the Legislature is in session from lawsuits seeking to compel a response to an open records request. Since the Legislature rarely if ever goes out of session, this new standard would mean that legislators would rarely if ever have to respect the state’s open records law.

"I think the attorney general's position is a radical misinterpretation of that (provisions that are supposed to outline a narrow measure of legislative immunity),” Susan Crawford, a Madison attorney who served as an assistant attorney general and as chief counsel to former Gov. Jim Doyle, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I've never heard a legislator asserting they're above the law, which is what (Vukmir’s) doing. You have to wonder what she's trying to hide."