{"id":5115,"date":"2023-08-22T19:45:15","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T19:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5115"},"modified":"2023-08-22T20:08:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T20:08:02","slug":"sarah-godlewski-secretary-of-state-is-illegally-withholding-public-records-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5115","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Godlewski, Secretary of State, Is Illegally Withholding Public Records: Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/sarah-godlewski-open-records\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"sarah<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Secretary of State is in clear violation of the open records law. WILL attorneys are working in Court to obtain access to the unlawfully withheld records\u201d \u2013 Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski refused to follow open records laws and fulfill a records request that has been pending for almost six months \u201crelating to the unusual circumstances surrounding her appointment,\u201d and now she\u2019s being sued by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and the Institute for Reforming Government.<\/p>\n

WILL Deputy Counsel, Lucas Vebber, stated, \u201cTransparent and accountable government is not a suggestion, but a vital principle to preserving our democracy. When state bureaucrats skirt open records requests from the public, WILL is ready to fight back and hold them accountable. We are proud to represent IRG\u2019s investigative efforts and support their right to access documents from the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

IRG Chief Legal Counsel & Director of Oversight, Anthony LoCoco, added, \u201cThe Secretary of State\u2019s inability or unwillingness to fulfill a simple open records request despite having five months to do so is emblematic of the Evers\u2019 Administration\u2019s shoddy record on transparency. This lawsuit will hopefully serve as a reminder to executive branch bureaucrats that compliance with the public records law is not optional.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past March, according to a WILL news release, IRG\u2019s Chief Legal Counsel & Director of Oversight, Anthony LoCoco, \u201csubmitted a public records request to the Secretary of State\u2014seeking information involving communications between Governor Evers, former Secretary of State Doug La Follette, and current Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski. Despite numerous requests for updates by LoCoco, the request remains unfulfilled and there has been a deafening silence from state officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

The press release noted: \u201cThese records are important public documents due to the confusion surrounding the circumstances of La Follete\u2019s resignation just a few months into his term, which allowed Governor Evers to hand-pick Godlewski as his successor\u2014without voter approval\u2014 to serve out the remainder of the term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the public records law, Wisconsinites are \u201centitled to the greatest possible
\ninformation regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and
\nemployees who represent them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the Secretary of State is demonstrating a worrying inability or unwillingness to comply with this law and fulfill public records in a timely fashion\u2013or, as the public records law states, \u2018as soon as practicable and without delay.\u2019 This lack of transparency makes holding public officials accountable difficult or impossible\u2014an unacceptable state of affairs in a representative democracy,\u201d WILL\u2019s press release adds.<\/p>\n

It notes: \u201cAdditionally, the stonewalling by the Secretary of State\u2019s office is just the latest example of the Evers\u2019 administration\u2019s poor record on transparency. In July, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on the administration\u2019s decision to take down an online tool that tracked agency records request response times created during the Walker era. The decision is not surprising. IRG itself has experienced numerous other significant delays in record request fulfillment. A request to the Governor\u2019s office on its involvement with the U.S. Climate Alliance, for example, took five months to fulfill. A request to the Department of Natural Resources on its management of gray wolves is still pending after almost six months. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/sarah-godlewski-open-records\/ \u201cThe Secretary of State is in clear violation of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":5117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5118,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions\/5118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}