The April 27 meeting of the City of Rhinelander Common Council started and ended in unusual fashion as the public comment portion featured a citizen challenge of the closed session listed on the agenda and the meeting ended with an abrupt adjournment after the panel decided not to go into closed session.
A piece about the meeting was published in the May 6, 2026 issue of the Northwoods Star Journal. According to the story:
The challenge was based on the grounds that the meeting notice failed to meet the requirements of Wisconsin’s open meetings law — and several alderpersons found those concerns persuasive enough to vote the motion down.
Steven Schreier, a former member of the Oneida County Board of Supervisors, addressed the council at the start of the meeting, reading directly from the state’s March 2025 open meetings law compliance guidelines.
He argued that the agenda’s closed session notice was legally deficient because it cited statutory exemptions without explaining the specific subject matter the council intended to discuss behind closed doors.
“Merely identifying and quoting from a statutory exemption does not reasonably identify any particular subject that might be taken up thereunder and thus is not adequate notice of a closed session,” Schreier read, attributing the language to the Attorney General’s office. He warned that a vote to proceed into closed session without adequate notice “could be cause for review by the city’s ethics board and review by the district attorney.”
After the council reached that item on the agenda, alderman Steven Jopek pressed city attorney Steve Sorenson to explain whether the notice satisfied the law’s requirements.
Sorenson defended the notice, telling council members that open meetings law in this area is not “black letter law” but rather an interpretive standard that weighs multiple factors — including the need to protect confidentiality. He acknowledged the notice was intentionally vague, explaining that disclosing more detail could compromise confidentiality — which he described as one of four pillars the city considers when drafting closed session notices. He told any aldermen who remained uncomfortable with the notice that they were free to vote no.
Jopek said he wanted to ensure the public could follow his reasoning.
Alderman Gerald Anderson also pressed Sorenson, saying he had difficulty understanding why the council couldn’t at least be told the general type of litigation at issue before voting to discuss it in private.
Sorenson declined to provide additional details, saying only that it “may be confidential” — whether that meant the city was facing a lawsuit, contemplating filing one, or dealing with some other legal matter. The motion to enter closed session, which would have covered personnel matters and legal strategy regarding pending or potential litigation, was made by Jopek himself and seconded. It failed on a roll call vote, with alderpersons Anderson, Jopek, Luke Kramer, Tom Barnett and Linnaea Newman voting no, and alderpersons Carrie Mikalauski, Bob Lueder and LeAnn Felten voting in favor.
Following the failed vote, Anderson suggested the council place an item on a future agenda to discuss the proper procedures and standards for closed sessions.
