Rock County Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Kuglitsch recently ruled that the School District of Beloit violated Wisconsin’s Open Records Law when it denied a citizen a request for email addresses from one of its distribution lists, according to a story in the Jan. 22, 2025 issue of the Beloit Daily News.
In April 2023, MaryAnn Sveom requested the list of email addresses used by the district
to promote a $23 million referendum that was rejected by taxpayers that month.
Sveom cited a court of appeals decision requiring the Mequon-Thiensville School District to release the same kind of records. The district denied much of Sveom’s request, providing only staff emails. Sveom then sued for the information she requested in August 2023.
On Jan. 16, Kuglitsch noted that the case was similar to the Mequon-Thiensville case, saying both districts used taxpayer resources to send messages in favor of the referendum question while denying the public access to the same audience.
The SDOB tried to pass a referendum again in April 2024 and was unsuccessful. Beloit’s school board recently approved putting a referendum question on this April’s ballot, asking voters to approve the district exceeding its spending limit by $40.2 million over the next three years.
In December, the district hired Milton-based Hadley Social Media and Public Relations to lead the referendum campaign after using in-house personnel for the last two.
The district did not comment on a Daily News email asking for comment about the Jan. 16 decision.
Sveom was represented by Tom Kamenick of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, which focuses on representing plaintiffs in open records and open meetings cases.
