The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which had previously filed an ethics complaint against 43 Wisconsin state legislators, alleging that their relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) violated the Badger State’s ethics and lobbying laws, announced that they, together with Common Cause, have prevailed in a separate lawsuit filed against five Republican state legislators whom they alleged sought to conceal ALEC-related records by placing them in their personal email accounts.
In their formal settlement agreement [PDF], the five Republican legislators acknowledged that they were not relieved of their obligation under Wisconsin’s Public Records law to provide such public records, even if the records were located within their personal email account. They agreed to provide the requested records and to reimburse CMD and Common Cause for $2,519.50 in attorney’s fees and costs.
Republicans DO NOT CARE……
They get the results they wish…
And just about every case the
are NOT prosecuted for their Crimes.
Just look at the list of republicans
which have never been investigated MUCH
less prosecuted for their crimes..
Start with Bush . Cheney . Rove . Rumsfeld .
Wall Street . RNC . Their purging of voters ..
The list is too large to even think about
listing.
Those interested in this story would do well to remember Romney’s destruction of state-computer hard drives at the end of his term as Governor of Massachusetts, in order to destroy any such evidence.
Reuters 12-06-2011
I brought this up on another thread: why didn’t the suit demand ALL communications subject to Open Records laws rather than just the ALEC ones? Chances are there are more than just ALEC communications subject to disclosure on their personal email accounts.
Dan @3 asks:
Such a broad request would be open ended. It would amount to an aimless fishing expedition that would unduly burden the WI GOP legislators with the obligation to peruse all of their email accounts to determine whether there was something that might qualify as being subject to the Open Records Act.
If CMD had done as you suggest, the WI legislators would have had a valid objection to production that would have probably been upheld by the court.
Instead, CMD, which has been investigating ties between those legislators and ALEC that may violate WI ethics laws appropriately limited their request to records pertaining to their communications with ALEC.