Supreme Court rules in newspaper’s favor

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper in its efforts to obtain public records from police. An open-government group praised the ruling, which says public agencies cannot charge for staff time in omitting sensitive information.

The paper sued almost two years ago. It argued that the police department’s decision to limit the amount of time staff could use to deal with requests for incident reports was arbitrary and the fee it wanted to charge was too high. The state’s high court reversed a ruling by a Milwaukee County judge.

The Supreme Court heard arguments last April and issued its ruling Wednesday, June 27. The suit originated with a 2010 records request when the newspaper wanted to do an audit of two weeks of incident reports.

After producing some copies of those reports for free, the department told the newspaper obtaining 750 additional reports would cost$4,500. The Journal Sentinel argued that the cost basically closes those records to the public.

State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen called the high court's decision a “common sense interpretation of the Public Records law.”

President of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council Bill Lueders said, “Let's not weaken our law by letting government officials charge extra for obeying it.”

Tags: business, wisconsin