Sunshine Week continues across the nation, and especially in Wisconsin, where record-setting warm temperatures continue and 70+ degree days are predicted through the weekend.
From the sunshineweek.org website:
Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.
In recognition of Sunshine Week, the Society of Professional Journalists has decided to bestow one of three "Black Hole Awards" to
the Wisconsin Legislature.
The "Black Hole Award" makes it official. The current version of the Wisconsin Legislature sucks.
The other "winners" were Georgia Legislature’s 2008 law and 2011 amendments to that law providing tax credits for private schools, and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services
.
I can't really sum it better than the Society, so here is the portion of their press release that describes why they gave one of their awards to the FitzWalkerstan Wisconsin Legislature:
The Wisconsin State Legislature ignored the state's open meetings law in hastily passing a collective bargaining bill in March 2011, then successfully urged the state supreme court to exempt it from this law.
Additionally, tasked with redrawing voter boundaries based on the 2010 Census, the legislature's Republican leadership hammered out new maps behind closed doors, even having their members sign secrecy agreements. The maps were unveiled less than a week before the only public hearing on the bills, which promptly passed. Afterward, the leaders fought court orders to release records showing what they had done, drawing an uncommonly sharp rebuke from a federal judge.
The Wisconsin legislature also passed a law barring even police from knowing who may be carrying concealed weapons. And while opening the state capitol to these weapons, it cracked down on the use of cameras by citizens in the state assembly.
No word on whether the Legislature's Republican leaders will be sending a representative to pick up the award, but they will probably be eligible next year, too. They recently taped black plastic garbage bags over the windows on the doors that lead to the legislative chambers' public galleries. That was to prevent people from recording the proceedings from outside the galleries.
Congratulations to brothers Jeff Fitzgerald and Scott Fitzgerald, Speaker of the Assembly and Senate Majority Leader respectively. When they decided to trash 165 years of Wisconsin's tradition of open and honest government, they didn't mess around. They're locking all the doors, shutting all the windows, and having their father, the head of the state police, arrest anyone who dares to post video of their secret proceedings.
EXCLUSIVE UPDATE...reaction from the Fitzgerald brothers: