SAA Pressure Yields Concessions From Media Governor Jim Doyle quietly signed Assembly Bill 196 (the “Woznicki fix”) into law as Act 47 on August 11th. The bill, which revamped the Wisconsin open records law, was highlighted in a ceremony before the media on August 18th.

You might recall that the SAA opposed, and ultimately helped defeat, the “Woznicki fix” in 2002 because it would have overturned the procedural protections set forth by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Woznicki v. Erickson (1996) and subsequent cases. These procedures, including notice and judicial review, had been adopted to protect the privacy interests of public employees when their personnel records were requested. For local government officials like school superintendents and principals, these protections would have been eliminated by the “Woznicki fix.” SAA analysis subsequently concluded that the Woznicki protections afforded public officials little protection. Therefore, the SAA’s challenge has been to provide privacy protections for public officials elsewhere in the open records law.

As a reward for the SAA’s effective political pressure, the SAA did receive a “seat at the table” for the negotiations on the issue in late 2002 and early 2003. Although the SAA did not get all that it wanted (i.e., the exception for performance evaluations), Assembly Bill 196 did incorporate the SAA proposal to provide public officials with notification and the opportunity to append a written response and additional documentation to requested records prior to release. We were also able to achieve an exception for a public official’s home address, home email address, home telephone number and social security number. These concessions by media representatives were an important victory for the SAA, one that required a tremendous amount of SAA political pressure to achieve.

In the end, the SAA did not support or oppose AB 196. It became clear early in negotiations that a “Woznicki fix” bill would pass this session. Some may say that we should have kept fighting for an exception for performance evaluations. However, there was no coalition around which we could mount a campaign for an exception for performance evaluations. The bill passed by overwhelming margins in both houses. We would have faced huge opposition from the media and from key legislators. In the process, we could have jeopardized our credibility with key legislators.

The final analysis of this issue lies in the answer to the question: Does Act 47 provide SAA members with greater protections under the open records law than they were previously afforded? The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”