Oneida County District Attorney Michael Schiek recently fined a committee chair and also mandated open meetings training for the full Oneida County Board.
The Lakeland Times filed an open meetings complaint against the Labor Relations and Employee Services committee for allegedly talking about items that were not posted on the meeting agenda.
The Lakeland Times reported Committee Chair Ted Cushing had to pay a $25 fine and every county board member was mandated to attend seminar on open meeting.
Wisconsin has a watchdog group that works with open meetings and open records called the Freedom of Information Council. Its President is Bill Lueders who praised Schiek's action..
".....it is very encouraging to see that a District Attorney takes this matter so seriously and was willing to bring in an enforcement action. This is not a common occurrence . Most District Attorneys don't think it's worth their time or efforts to enforce the open meetings law, so I applaud your District Attorney for doing that..."
Lueders says the most important part of the action is requiring all board members to review the open meetings law. He says often the violations are not a deliberate attempt to avoid accountability, but rather a lack of knowledge about the particulars of the law.
Lueders says the state Attorney General's office has training sessions and has those trainings available on the Department of Justicewebsite. He says the Freedom of Information Council has links on it's website to tutorials about open meetings and records.
Lueders says government is best when it operates in the open. He says that is also true for government officials as a way to build trust with the public.
