While secretly drawing
new legislative maps designed to improve their electoral prospects, Wisconsin Republicans in the state legislature signed legal agreements promising not to publicly discuss what they were doing, and at the same time legislators were told:
"Public comments on this map may be different than what you hear in this room. Ignore the public comments," the talking points also say.
This bizarre conspiracy of silence was revealed yesterday in documents made public by order of a three-judge federal panel which is handling litigation against the Republican-drawn maps. The legal agreements explicitly told lawmakers not to discuss the drafting of the new maps in public:
The agreement tells each lawmaker "you agree not to disclose the fact and/or contents of such discussions or any draft documents within your possession."
Wisconsin Republicans also fought in court to keep these documents secret, but on three separate occasions the three-judge panel
ruled against them. The rulings were particularly scathing, as this excerpt from the final ruling shows:
"Quite frankly, the Legislature and the actions of its counsel give every appearance of flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to hide from both the court and the public the true nature of exactly what transpired in the redistricting process," the ruling reads.
Last year, when Wisconsin Republican leaders were asked by members of the media about any plans to draft new legislative maps in secret, they responded with
insults:
“You talked to Democrats who ‘think’ that Republican leaders have these grand plots,” Andrew Welhouse, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, says in an email response to questions about GOP plans. “I guess I’ll leave it up to your journalistic standards if their motivated speculation is worth reporting on.”
In summary, most Wisconsin Republicans in the state legislature signed legal agreements promising not to discuss public legislation in public, distributed an internal memo indicating that what Republican leaders were saying in public about that legislation wasn't true, fought in court to keep both the legal agreements and the memo secret, and all the while insulted anyone who claimed that there was a Republican conspiracy of silence taking place.
On the rec list, stcroix cheesehad has more.