#Tom Kamenick

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Your Right to Know: Long waits undercut records law

"A revised law could still say 'as soon as practicable and without delay,' but also set a time limit of, say, 30 days, for records to be provided, absent extraordinary circumstances." - Bill Lueders

By Bill Lueders The other day, in my role as an advocate for open government, I heard from a Wisconsin resident who has waited more than five months for records he requested from a local law enforcement agency. He has gently prodded the agency several times, asking, “How much more time is my request going to take?” More than three months have passed since these queries have yielded a…

[benrleeusa]

[Eugene Volokh] Challenge to Ban on "Literature with Offensive Content" at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College

The policy -- here, applied to someone passing out religious valentines -- also bans "signs ... with offensive content," and more generally limits even nonoffensive signs and leafleting to a narrow "free speech zone."

Richard Esenberg, Tom Kamenick and Clyde Taylor at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty have just filed a lawsuit challenging the policy; you can read the Complaint, which lays out the facts and some of the Institute's legal arguments.

The ban on "offensive" speech is clearly unconstitutionally vague and likely viewpoint-based; and, even setting that aside, the rule limiting leafletting to a narrow zone would be unconstitutional even if it were content-neutral. A university does have power to limit speech that is loud enough to cause a disruption, or to limit large demonstrations that can block pedestrian traffic; that is particularly so within university buildings. But the policy here is much broader than that.

[wausaupilot]

Wausau mayor accuses alder of violating open meetings law amid appointment dissent

Mayor Doug Diny this week accused Dist. 1 Alder Carol Lukens of violating state law by sending an email regarding an appointee to a Wausau committee, as friction continues to mount in city leadership.

By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review Mayor Doug Diny this week accused Dist. 1 Alder Carol Lukens of violating state law by sending an email regarding an appointee to a Wausau committee, as friction continues to mount in city leadership. On Tuesday, the City Council voted down a proposed appointment for Vylius Lesky, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who spent more than three…

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Your Right to Know: Using outside record vendors brings risks

Such outsourcing is touted as a cost-saving measure, but it can make obtaining records prohibitively expensive, as the Wisconsin Examiner found. 

Your Right to Know / Tom Kamenick Last March, the Wisconsin Examiner asked the Black River Falls Police Department to search for emails regarding the death of a missing Indigenous man. The department said it would process the request but the news outlet would have to pay $4,400. That’s the amount the city’s IT vendor, Tech Pros, quoted to perform the search. Tom Kamenick It was a dramatic…

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Wisconsin school board member sues his own board, settles for 6 figures

Meier alleged the board violated Wisconsin’s Open Meeting Law on at least five occasions.

By Corrinne Hess | Wisconsin Public Radio A Wauwatosa school board member who sued his own board for open meetings violations has settled the case for $132,500. The unprecedented six-figure settlement to Michael Meier comes as the Wauwatosa School District will ask voters in two November referenda to approve new funding totaling $124.4 million. Meier filed a five-count complaint against the…

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Column: Officials must bear burden of proof in records cases

Imagine I sue a school district for refusing to provide copies of records. Do I have to prove I’m entitled to them, or does the district have to prove it can withhold them?

Your Right to Know / Tom Kamenick Imagine I sue a school district for refusing to provide copies of records. Do I have to prove I’m entitled to them, or does the district have to prove it can withhold them? That’s a question the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, along with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, have asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to…

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Your Right to Know: Government lists are public information

Kamenick: Government records are our records, and we have the same right to use lists of contact information obtained and maintained with our tax dollars as government officials do.

Your Right to Know / Tom Kamenick As part of doing business, government agencies often maintain contact lists or distribution lists. These days those are typically email addresses, but they also can contain physical addresses or even phone numbers.  Your state legislator probably has a list of email addresses to send newsletters. Your local governmental units might have multiple lists for…

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‘Wisconsin does not, and should not, have secret police’ – The Badger Project sues state DOJ for full list of police officers

“Courts have ruled time and time again that speculative fears of harm do not justify withholding government records from the public,” Tom Kamenick, president of the Wisconsin Transparency Project and the lead attorney in this case, said in a statement.

By Peter Cameron, THE BADGER PROJECT The Badger Project filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Justice Thursday after it again refused to release a list of all certified law enforcement officers in the state. The suit was filed jointly with the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit public accountability journalism organization based in Chicago. The state DOJ had already rejected a similar…

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Your Right to Know: Limit privacy protections for police

"Tom Kamenick, an attorney and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, doesn’t buy that undercover officers can’t be named, especially given that they don’t use their real names in the field." - Jacob Resneck

By Jacob Resneck Law enforcement officers in Winnebago County shot three people in 2023, one fatally. And while we know the names of the people shot, the identities of those who pulled the trigger remain secret. Jacob Resneck The fatal shooting, on Aug. 2, was of an armed 37-year-old man at a Neenah gas station by an Outagamie County sheriff’s deputy and an Appleton police officer, both…