Juvenile prison tour locks out public
State committee sidesteps open meetings law to keep others from attending
MADISON - A legislative committee plans to visit Wisconsin’s trouble-filled juvenile prison Monday but is sidestepping the state’s open meetings law to ensure members of the public can’t tag along.
The tour of Lincoln Hills School for Boys is the latest sign Republicans who control the Legislature are interested in digging into the problems at an institution that has been under a criminal investigation for more than two years.
But the Assembly Corrections Committee also plans to keep the public from seeing firsthand how it operates. Rep. Michael Schraa (R-Oshkosh), the chairman of the committee, said he wants to gather information without creating a political spectacle and had checked with nonpartisan attorneys for the Legislature to make sure his plans were in keeping with the state’s open meetings law.
But advocates for open government criticized the committee’s approach, particularly as the tour comes at the beginning of Sunshine Week, which focuses on the importance of government transparency and the public’s right to know.
“They’re playing with fire here,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. “They’re trying to avoid openness pretty much for its own sake. They’re trying to avoid being seen doing their job in public. Why? What’s the advantage to anyone to do this?”
Schraa said the private tour would help the committee as it considers the issues facing Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share the same grounds 30 miles north of Wausau.
“I don’t want a circus up there,” he said. “I just don’t want it to be a spectacle to be going up there to make a political point.”
Republicans who control the Legislature largely kept their distance last year from the problems at Lincoln Hills, but they have changed their approach in recent weeks. For instance, the Senate on Tuesday passed a bill requiring Lincoln Hills guards to report to law enforcement suspected child abuse and neglect.
Schraa took over as chairman of the corrections committee in January and immediately started looking into Lincoln Hills. Last month, he brought Corrections Secretary Jon Litscher before the committee to testify for hours about Lincoln Hills and other prisons. “I’m going in full bore,” Schraa said. He said he would like his committee to eventually tour three or four adult prisons in addition to Lincoln Hills.
The tour of Lincoln Hills comes at a time when the Legislature has come under scrutiny for its open government policies.
In 2015, Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee voted to gut the open records law but reversed course after a public outcry. Schraa was on that committee and voted in line with the other Republicans.
For the Lincoln Hills tour on Monday, Schraa initially planned to bring the full corrections committee but changed the arrangements after a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked to attend.
Under the new plan, five members — less than a majority of the 11-member committee — will visit the facility on Monday. A second contingent of the committee, also with fewer members than a majority, will tour Lincoln Hills in a couple of weeks, Schraa said.
Gatherings of legislative committees are open to the public under the meetings law. But Schraa said the meetings law won’t apply to the tours because they won’t include the minimum number of committee members needed to take any action, known as a quorum.
The open meetings law forbids committees from getting together in secret through “walking quorums” — that is, by holding a series of meetings in which members of a committee agree to act as a bloc on an issue.
Schraa said the elements of a walking quorum won’t be met because the committee is gathering information, not seeking to agree to act in a particular way.
The Freedom of Information Council’s Lueders isn’t convinced.
“They seem to recognize it would be a problem if all the members of the committee went. I don’t think they solve that problem by splitting it into two batches,” he said.
The public won’t know what discussions the committee members will have on the tours that could lead to legislation, he said.
Reps. David Bowen and Evan Goyke, both Milwaukee Democrats, said they planned to go on Monday’s tour and would have no problem with reporters attending.
The investigation into child neglect and prisoner abuse began in January 2015 and the FBI took it over last year. Since last year, Lincoln Hills officials have retrained their workers, installed more fixed cameras and equipped guards with body cameras.
Two lawsuits have been filed over the institution — one by a former inmate who suffered severe brain damage after a suicide attempt and one by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsinand Juvenile Law Center.
On Thursday, a federal judge cleared the way for the ACLU case to proceed.