While livestreaming meetings has become the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, public officials need to do a better job of making sure no one — and no meeting — slips through the technological cracks.
In the most recent installment of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council’s Your Right to Know column, La Crosse Tribune reporter Olivia Herken offers local lawmakers some suggestions.
The state’s openness laws should not be seen as a burden, but as a way for public officials to build trust with the people they represent, writes Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council president Bill Lueders in the council’s most recent Your Right to Know column.
In the column, which is available for publication by WNA members, Lueders discusses a decision by the DOJ’s Office of Open Government that took far too long to issue.
In the latest Your Right to Know column for November 2020, Gretchen Schuldt of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative writes about the Department of Corrections’ lack of transparency over COVID-19 cases in Wisconsin prisons.
The column is available for publication by WNA members.
The state Department of Health Services has said it finds “no public health value in releasing the names of the school districts with active cases of COVID-19.” Meanwhile, other states across the country are releasing this exact same data in the interest of public health.
In a recent column for the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Coalition, journalist and council member Jonathan Anderson urges state health officials to make the names of all schools with COVID-19 cases public. The column is available for publication by WNA members.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that many of our jobs can be done digitally and remotely. The same should be true of accessing government records, reporter and radio producer Steven Potter writes.
In the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council’s most recent “Your Right to Know” column, Potter urges government agencies to serve the public interest by paying attention to the lessons we’ve learned in the past several months.
Wisconsin citizens are getting the can handle the truth, Christa Westerberg writes, and they deserve to know the names of businesses and other establishments with COVID-19 outbreaks.
It is time to break down some of the barriers that prevent the public from getting a full and true picture of how police perform, Bill Lueders writes.
With the recent protests that have rocked many American cities over the past week, now is an ideal time to review the rights of journalists as they relate to protests.
In a positive step for government transparency, Wisconsinites can now watch the live-streamed workings of government on our phones, tablets and computers.
Political ad defamation suits are difficult to win. But even the filing of a lawsuit, successful or not, can chill political speech.
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