Open Records & Email

An assistant state attorney general advised public officials Wednesday not to use e-mails to communicate back and forth with their fellow members on local government bodies because they could be violating Wisconsin’s open meetings law.
The use of e-mail is “a thorny issue,” Assistant Attorney General Bruce Olsen told an audience of about 100 local government and school board officials, law enforcement officers, attorneys and journalists at a seminar organized by the state Department of Justice.
“Sometimes it looks like a letter and sometimes it looks like a conversation,” Olsen said of e-mail correspondence. AMY RINARD – Journal-Sentinel