It seems that they've been embarrassed too many times.
Like, for example, when Scott Walker's budget came out and the time-honored mission of the University of Wisconsin, known as the Wisconsin Idea, had been utterly trashed. The "search for truth" had been removed, along with "improve the human condition" and "stimulate society" and "extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses." The new mission statement gave top billing, instead, to "meet the state's workforce needs."
When pressed, Walker claimed it was a "drafting error." Which proved to be a PANTS ON FIRE lie according to PolitiFact, who used Wisconsin's robust open records laws to retrieve communications and drafting documents to prove it. The ability to access those records enabled PolitiFact to chart out the whole sordid, deliberate story.
Tonight, in a craven move by the Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee, the Wisconsin state budget (the BUDGET!!) is being modified to make sure that never happens again.
Jump...
What's happening tonight is that they're cramming twenty-four pages of ugly policy-provisions into the state budget (even though they're not budgetary items) that would be difficult or impossible to pass if they saw the light of day.
There will be no public input, no public hearing on these items.
And we'll never know which corporate lobbyists even drafted them, or any other legislation until regime change occurs in Wisconsin, because the evisceration of our open records laws is retroactive to yesterday, July 1.
The provisions will exempt from the public records law opinions, analyses, briefings, background information, recommendations, suggestions, drafts, correspondence about drafts and notes "created or prepared in the process of reaching a decision concerning a policy or course of action or in the process of drafting a document or formulating an official communication."
It will also allow legislators to refuse, if they so choose (and they will) to disclose pretty much any correspondence from anyone, and tell whatever lies they want about it with no way to prove it.
So, for example, the intrepid new grassroots parent group Wauwatosa Support Our Schools (SOS), who've just issued an open-records demand that their privatizer-legislators turn over all the correspondence from constituents so we all can see what a TSUNAMI of pro-public-education contacts they've gotten....
Yeah, that won't be able to happen any more.
If you've got the stomach for it, you can read the motion summary here: it's the items numbered 28 to 32.
There's more in Madison's CapTimes, as well, where watchdog-journalist Bill Lueders has this to say:
"It's a very disturbing and cowardly action that guts the open records law with regard to the Legislature itself," Lueders said. "And to do it in this fashion, as a last-minute budget provision — I would hope that people are absolutely outraged by this … If they're unwise enough to pass it, I hope there's a tremendous blowback and the governor will veto this. This is not acceptable."
VETO this? Are you kidding me?
More from Lueders:
"If Wisconsin wants to take a giant leap into corruption, I think that's a good move for them to make," Lueders said. "It's cowardly. It's dirty. It violates the tradition of the state of Wisconsin and it shows what miserable cowards that these people are that they would stick this in an omnibus motion."
What the administration of Governor Scott Walker is doing to Wisconsin, he wants to do to the United States of America.
No. No. No.