A Milwaukee journalist working on a story about police response times was arrested over the weekend after taking photographs of squad cars in a Milwaukee Police Department parking lot. Edgar Mendez, a reporter with the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, was issued a $181 ticket for trespassing — but only after being handcuffed, fingerprinted and questioned at the police station at […]
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For democracy to work, citizens need to know what their government is up to. Hillary Clinton hid her emails as secretary of state from her citizen bosses. She wanted us to know only what she wanted us to know. Scott Walker hid his emails as Milwaukee County executive, too.
Could both of these presidential candidates have achieved their goals without breaking the rules? It appears so. They broke the rules anyway.
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It’s a pretty simple question for a public official: “What exactly do you do with your time?” Sometimes, the best way to answer that question is to obtain the official’s calendar, through the state’s open records law.
In my work as a reporter, I’ve done this for the state treasurer and his staff, who work for an office with few official duties. I’ve also used the monthly calendars of Gov. Scott Walker to plot his travel and track his day-to-day meetings.
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