Editorial: Doyle's wrong on records

An editorial

January 3, 2005

 

Jim Doyle was a staunch defender of the public's right to know when he served as Wisconsin's attorney general.

But Doyle does not appear to have taken his commitment to openness with him when he moved to the governor's office.

There is little doubt in the minds of observers that the state Department of Transportation violated public records law when it withheld for months a report that revealed flaws in the governor's scheming to contract out work that had been done by state employees.

The report showed that it is less expensive to have state engineers work on transportation projects than private contractors.

That's common sense. It is almost always cheaper to have state employees complete public projects.

Unfortunately, the governor is determined to downsize state government, even if that initiative ends up costing Wisconsin taxpayers more money in the end.

The Department of Transportation report was inconvenient for the governor and for Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi because it provided detailed evidence of the flaws in their privatization schemes.

Only after leaders of public employee unions demanded for months that the report be released was it finally shared with the public in November. But the report was not released in the timely manner required by Wisconsin's open records law, which suggests that requests for public documents - which

the report clearly was - must be met "without delay."

 

During the many months when the union leaders were seeking the report, Busalacchi reportedly told them it was not completed. In fact, it had been completed in April.

We know this because the Transportation Department's chief counsel released a memo that included the actual timeline. Shortly after that memo was released, the chief counsel was moved to another position, in what certainly looks like an act of retribution.

If things are as they appear, this is scandalous stuff - certainly, as serious a matter as any of the wrongdoing this newspaper and Attorney General Doyle complained about during Tommy Thompson's tenure as governor.

Doyle and Busalacchi say that things are not as they appear. They claim there were no lies or cover-ups and that what looks like the demotion of the chief counsel was something else altogether: a coincidence.

Our experience suggests coincidences are few and far between in circumstances such as this. But even if we give Doyle the benefit of the doubt, his response to the controversy has been atrocious.

Instead of acknowledging that this matter requires more serious investigation, the governor said, "The record has been released. It wasn't anything anybody was trying to hide."

 

That sounds like the sort of bureaucratic run-around statement that Doyle would have pounced on when he was serving as attorney general. He would never have let Tommy Thompson get away with trying to avoid getting to the bottom of what really happened at the Department of Transportation.

And if the union leaders involved choose to make a formal complaint, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, who are responsible for defending the public's right to know, should be no less aggressive with Doyle than Doyle would have been with

Thompson.

 

Even if there is no complaint, Doyle should reassess his position. His response to the Department of Transportation scandal is not something that the man who once so vigilantly defended the public's right to know could possibly be proud of. If Doyle wants to clean up this mess, and restore his reputation as someone who is committed to open government, he should acknowledge that a more serious investigation is needed.

 

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