David Michael Miller
In a Wisconsin State Journal op-ed on June 15, state Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) boasted that the Republicans’ version of the two-year state budget — as opposed to the one introduced by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers — was crafted “to reflect the priorities of the people.”
Nygren, co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, said the GOP’s version was built on input from constituents. The people, he asserted, had clearly expressed that they wanted expanded health care “without expanding welfare.” They wanted the $500 million the Republicans allocated in new school spending, but not the $1.4 billion Evers had sought. And, Nygren assured, “they don’t want taxes to go up.”
It’s unclear why state residents would express these views so strongly to GOP lawmakers, since they don’t match public opinion. A Marquette University Law School Poll released in April 2019 found that 55 percent of Wisconsin residents said “they would rather increase spending on public schools than reduce property taxes.” And a whopping 70 percent said “the state should accept federal funds to expand Medicaid coverage, while 23 percent oppose the expansion.”
Huge majorities of Wisconsinites also support redistricting reform—an idea Republicans stripped from the budget.
Nygren stated that Republicans in the Assembly had conducted “more than 200 budget-listening sessions around the state.” The office of Rep. Jim Steinke (R-Kewaunee), which made the same claim, told me this refers to listening sessions held by individual lawmakers in their districts.
No one has tabulated the collective input from these individual sessions, but there is a record of the four public hearings held by the Joint Finance Committee on Evers’ budget bill before Republicans released their own version. I tallied it up.
At these hearings — on April 5, April 10, April 15 and April 24 — 931 people registered or spoke in favor of various aspects of Evers’ budget, including many representatives of schools and health care providers. In contrast, 155 expressed opposition, including many representatives of convenience stores and vaping companies aggrieved about particular budget provisions. That’s 86 percent in favor.
But perhaps this turnout is not representative of the input that Rep. Nygren personally received. I set out to find out.
On June 17, two days after Nygren’s op-ed appeared, I requested records of communications his office had gotten on the budget bill, going back to March 1, 2019. This would include emails, letters and records of phone contacts.
Records custodians in Wisconsin can charge requesters for the “actual, necessary and direct cost” of making copies, and for the time they spend locating records, if it exceeds $50. I asked to be notified if the cost exceeded $25.
I didn’t think it would, since I was asking for records in electronic form and records on the same matter ought to be easy to find. And former Gov. Scott Walker didn’t charge a cent for the 50,000 emails on his “budget repair bill” he released in 2011 (after I sued him over it).
The next day, Nygren’s chief of staff, Nathan Schwanz, told me the cost of fulfilling my request would “likely exceed $25.” I asked for a breakdown and offered “to discuss ways to simplify this request to make it easier for you and less expensive for me.”
To this, Schwanz replied: “Your request seeks communications over the span of 3½ months on the largest bill of the legislative session. Limiting the scope of your request would likely reduce the amount of staff time spent fulfilling the request.”
So I downsized my request to emails that contained the word “budget.” I also suggested he could just provide any tally of input his office may have compiled. Schwanz replied to say the cost would still exceed $50.
The next thing I heard from Nygren’s office was on July 24 — five weeks later — when a staffer conveyed: “[T]he record locating/search costs associated with this open records request amounts to $334.66 — prepayment of this cost is required prior to the records being sent.”
I objected, noting that in numerous similar requests no lawmaker had ever charged me a location fee. I asked if Nygren’s office “uniquely lacks the competence to identify responsive records without incurring huge costs?” I suggested it was trying to maximize the amount.
Schwanz disputed this and reiterated that the records would be provided as soon as I forked over the $334.66.
I am not going to do that. It’s way too much money. And given that lawmakers, decades ago, corruptly exempted themselves from the records retention rules in place for all other state and local government officials, I couldn’t even be sure that Nygren hadn’t selectively destroyed certain communications, as some lawmakers do.
Let’s just say that John Nygren won this one. I set out to learn whether the GOP budget is truly reflective of the input received, as Nygren has claimed. He and his staff managed to make this prohibitively expensive.
Is Nygren being honest in how he characterizes this input, or is he a shameless and calculating liar determined to maintain the illusion that the public is on his party’s side despite evidence to the contrary? Perhaps we’ll never know.
Bill Lueders is editor of The Progressive and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
