Excerpts from recent Wisconsin editorials

The Journal Times of Racine, Oct. 21

Letteney-Weidner feud shrouded in secrecy

Secrecy in government, compounded by court-ordered secrecy, gives rise to speculation and rumor. That never serves the public interest.

The now long-running feud between City Attorney Scott Letteney and Racine Alderman Sandy Weidner illustrates that very well. In a circuitous dispute that began more than a year ago, the city attorney last August sought an ethics violation sanction against the alderman - and two other as yet unnamed aldermen - for allegedly sharing confidential or privileged communications from his office with constituents.

Letteney called for a closed meeting of the Executive Committee of the City Council and asked all aldermen to attend and presented a PowerPoint presentation of about 30 slides, most of which were emails from Weidner to constituents, but two involved communications from other aldermen, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The committee referred the matter to the Ethics Board for an advisory opinion.

This is where things went off the rails and ended up in the lap of Racine County Circuit Court Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz, who sealed the case in February - forbidding its release to the public - and then earlier this month sanctioned Weidner for contempt of court for talking with reporters from The Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press in September about the case.

Byzantine path

The byzantine and tortured path the dispute took to go before the court goes something like this. Weidner fought back against the possible ethics sanction and asked Letteney for a copy of his PowerPoint slides on the emails. Letteney declined, saying they were presented in closed session of the Executive Committee. Weidner filed a request for those records under the state’s open records law. Letteney denied that as well and Weidner filed suit in Circuit Court.

When the open records suit came before Judge Gasiorkiewicz, he took the unusual step of sealing the entire case. The judge told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter in September that he sealed the case “because of the nature of the action. It’s one that shouldn’t be open. I made a public policy determination.”

He was asked: Wasn’t it an open records case? He replied: “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s sealed.”

State open-records advocates say they have never heard of an open-records suit being sealed, or any kind of case without some record of who the parties are and why it was under seal.

That’s where things stood until, in September, Weidner defied the judge’s order and talked to reporters, saying that nothing she had sent to her constituents, in her experience, was confidential.

“To him (Letteney), anything that comes into or out of the city attorney’s office is covered by the attorney client-privilege,” she said, a far more expansive interpretation than the law allows, according to a Journal Sentinel report on Sept. 20.

According to that report, Gasiorkiewicz’s decision and order “don’t seem to reveal anything specific. It refers to a different 48-page document that lays out 16 emails and only makes vague references to their contents as he decides whether each is privileged or not.”

For some emails, the judge held them confidential because “the content contains reflects (sic) thoughts and processes regarding various ongoing legal matters involving the City of Racine,” and he deemed that privileged.

Others emails he tossed out, including one seeking a copy of a resolution creating the Redevelopment Authority, of which the judge said “nothing about this email or its contents reflect legal processes or thoughts.”

On another email, the judge held that the content was fully disclosed at a city Committee of the Whole meeting, which was videotaped and available for viewing on the city’s website. He tossed that one out, too.

Those decisions, of course, were under seal and were not to be made public. They only came out after Weidner talked publicly in September. Soon after that, Letteney and the City or Racine, represented by a Milwaukee law firm, promptly went back to court asked for a $15,000 sanction for violating the court seal.

Judge Gasiorkiewicz found Weidner guilty of civil contempt of court and ordered her to pay the city’s legal fees. Weidner’s attorneys are appealing the open-records case and the contempt charges to the Court of Appeals. That’s where this fracas currently stands.

All sorts of questions raised

As we said at the outset, this dust-up has taken a tortured and circuitous route, and has raised all sorts of speculation and questions throughout.

We can’t help but wonder why the city attorney, if he was simply trying to protect what he viewed as confidential legal communications from his office, didn’t just send a letter to city aldermen saying some recent communications had been mistakenly shared with constituents and to please be careful.

Yes, we understand that some city legal issues are legitimately confidential - things such as personnel issues, proposed contracts or city property purchases come to mind.

But if Letteney is arguing that all emails and communications that come from his office are top secret and not to be shared by aldermen, as Weidner alleges, we have a great deal of problem with that notion.

Perhaps the city attorney can clearly earmark those select and few communications that are not to be shared with constituents by aldermen. Such action, it would seem to us, could have enabled the whole court circus and the outside legal fees that have resulted in the past year to be avoided.

We would be remiss, as well, if we didn’t note that Letteney’s decision to seek a public sanction for an ethics violation by Alderman Weidner came as she was in the middle of a campaign for mayor, a contest she lost to now-Mayor Cory Mason, who received 54 percent of the vote. In politics, as in many things, timing is everything.

From what little we have seen of Weidner’s “egregious” emails through other media reports, most of them seem to be garden-variety legal issues and mundane, inconsequential communications from the City Attorney’s Office.

While it pains us, as an Editorial Board, to say this, we don’t know what we’re talking about.

That’s literally the truth, because the closed City Council session and the judge’s seal order have put these issues in a deep, dark hole, hidden from public view and impossible to judge.

We’re dismayed that the city attorney ever elevated it to a feud of this proportion. We’re dismayed, as well, that the court made a “public policy determination” to hide it from the public.

In our view such secrecy, on both levels, undermines the right of the public to assess how government officials are conducting public business.

We urge the Court of Appeals to set things straight, and we hope it does.

___

The Capital Times, Oct. 16

Scott Walker is not a man of his word; his campaign promises cannot be trusted

Scott Walker promised that he wasn’t interested in attacking state employees.

He was.

Scott Walker promised that he wasn’t interested in promoting an anti-worker “right-to-work” law.

He was.

Scott Walker promised that he wasn’t interested in running for president.

He was.

If Scott Walker makes a promise in a campaign, the safest and soundest assessment is that he is lying.

And that is certainly the case with the governor’s promise to protect people with pre-existing health conditions.

In this campaign season, the governor is trying to remake himself as something of a compassionate conservative. He even has a new video out in which he claims: “As long as I’m governor, I will always cover pre-existing conditions.”

The problem with this pronouncement from the governor was explained by Randy Bryce, a cancer survivor who has made health care issues a central theme of his congressional bid in southeastern Wisconsin’s First District: “Scott Walker is literally suing the government to end protections for people with pre-existing conditions.”

Bryce is right. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, Walker’s legal errand boy, is suing to overturn the Affordable Care Act and the protections for pre-existing conditions that go with it.

This is a point that Congresswoman Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, has been making ever since Walker started trying to remake himself. Moore has known Walker for almost 30 years. Though she beat him in a legislative race back in 1990, she has frequently had a kind word for the governor.

But she also knows when to be skeptical about the man.

“If Governor Walker really cared about protecting people with pre-existing conditions, he wouldn’t have directly authorized Attorney General Brad Schimel to sue to overturn the ACA,” says Moore, who adds: “Actions speak louder than words, Scott.”

Moore’s emphasis on words and deeds is important.

When candidates are getting started in politics, what they say matters. It provides a sense of what they might do.

When a career politician is running for re-election, however, promises have to be weighed against the track record.

By now, the question is settled.

Scott Walker is not a man of his word.

His campaign promises cannot be trusted.

___

Beloit Daily News, Oct. 15

Politics 2018; hypocrisy wins

Unless they break laws, the ’mob’ is just Americans exercising their rights.

Maybe it’s because the folks who study such things say attention spans are growing shorter and shorter in this age when information overload is a staple of everyday life.

In fact, a Pew Research study of more than 5,000 people found 7 in 10 report “news fatigue” - too much coming at them from all directions at all times.

Possibly that’s why some seem to forget the incivilities from one side of the political divide when faced with incivilities from the other side.

Or, just as likely, it’s because of that old staple in the world of politics - simple hypocrisy.

The most common phrase in the new talking points for the Republican Party as the 2018 midterm elections grow closer is “mob rule.”

The phrase is being repeated up and down the party and references what supporters view as the mistreatment of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats and protesters. The story goes on that Republican senators were exposed to the “mob” as protesters around the Capitol got loud and sometimes in their face. Street action of all kinds by opponents is being painted as “mob” action. Some have even drawn in the shooting last year at a congressional softball practice and blamed it on the “mob.”

The strategy is transparent. Equate Democrats with anger, violence and opposition to law and order as the Nov. 6 election approaches. The message: Be very afraid if Democrats win.

OK, let’s go back in time just a little to around 2010, and subsequent years. It wasn’t Democrats holding the big protest rallies. It wasn’t Democrats getting in politicians’ faces and storming town hall meetings. It wasn’t Democrats being loud and getting in incumbent politicians’ faces.

The conservative base - and the rise of the tea party - rocked Democrats’ world with raucous rallies and confrontational tactics.

And it worked. Republicans swept the elections and installed conservative majorities both nationally and in state after state. The result has been a strong resurgence among conservatives as their representatives have been able to govern and install policies in Washington and many statehouses.

Wisconsin is a clear example. The state largely was considered blue before 2010, when voters swept Scott Walker into the governorship and handed Republicans majorities in both houses of the legislature. In 2016, Wisconsin went for Donald Trump, the first Republican to carry the state in decades.

Anger works to motivate the base, as every close political observer knows. It worked for Republicans to turn around the party’s sinking fortunes prior to 2010. And anger over Trump may or may not work for Democrats who are hoping for a blue wave this November.

Short memories and hypocrisy aside, both sides resort to stoking anger.

As Americans, though, we also should keep this in mind. Look at the top of this page, where the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is reproduced. It guarantees the right of the people to peaceably assemble and seek redress of their grievances. That means dissent and protest is enshrined in the nation’s founding document and supreme law.

Mind you, “peaceably” means nonviolent. The Constitution does not condone criminal conduct. But it does mean the people are not required to be passive with the political crowd. Your mother might have put it this way: Look and speak, but don’t touch.

So, think of this like everything else viewed across the political divide - the language depends on who is making the noise. If it’s your side, it’s patriots standing up for their rights. If it’s the other side, it’s a mob.