Governor Evers has been flagrantly violating the Open Records Laws. This is not the first example. It won’t be the last. He shuns oversight by the people.

MILWAUKEE – After a year-long battle over Governor Tony Evers’ emails, a Dane County Circuit Court judge ruled this week in FOX6’s favor.

In September 2019, FOX6 requested just over four weeks of emails to and from Governor Tony Evers and his chief of staff, Maggie Gau. FOX6 regularly conducts open records spot checks on public employees’ emails. A recent spot check on two weeks of state lawmakers’ emails uncovered the practice of using personal email addresses to communicate about sensitive government information.

The governor’s assistant legal counsel Erin Deeley denied the request and FOX6’s subsequent attempt to narrow the request to emails from one week.

Finally, FOX6 asked for just Governor Evers’ emails from just one day – June 14, 2019. The request was denied. Governor Evers’ attorney said all email requests will be denied if they do not contain search terms or wording she can turn into search terms. That is, requests for emails about the budget or containing the word “agriculture,” for example, may be processed; requests for all emails over a specific time frame, no matter how short, will be denied. In other words, the requesters need to know what’s in the public records before they can see the public records.