Wisconsin Gov. Warren Spahn AKA Anthony Evers, if you're hiding nothing in your "alias" emails, prove it.
Release the emails.
All 17,000 records, according to your own estimate.
Because right now you're refusing to, and the rest is just white noise.
Distraction.
If Assembly Speaker Robin Vos was using a secret "unofficial public" (oxymoron there) email account in Babe Ruth's name, the media would go wild. If U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) was secretly communicating as Robin Yount, the media would jump off a cliff.
In fact, they did go wild about former Republican Scott Walker's emails and router (for months and months) but are now trying to bail Evers out by saying, but Walker did it too (their new favorite refrain.) It's hysterical the media are now propping Walker up as a paragon of open government virtue when they trolled him endlessly over it! He used a fake account, so move on, we only care about open government until we don't. Well, in fairness some of the media accounts are fairer than others. But the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's story really took the cake.
There was even a criminal investigation into Walker's county emails! But now it's a "bipartisan practice,"
according to Tyler Katzenberger, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "misinformation reporter," so that makes it okay for Evers to have an "alias email account" in a real person's name.
The media even tried to soften the blow by dubbing Evers' Walter-Mitty persona as an "alternate" email.
They did the same thing with parole. Oh well, some liberal Wisconsin news outlets argued, so what that Evers' appointee released some of the most brutal killers in state history without victims' families being told, Walker's appointee released some killers too! (No mention of the fact Walker's appointee released less serious offenders and at a slower rate.) By the way - Walker is no longer governor. He inverted his first and middle name; also not a great practice. But he didn't take the name of a baseball god.
Maybe it's just bad to release brutal killers no matter who is doing it...Maybe it's not a great idea to co-opt the name of a dead baseball player to do public business. No matter who is doing it.
Their tone is completely different. As is their spin, and everyone can see it. That's especially true of the liberal Milwaukee and Madison newspapers. So predictable!
AG Brad Schimel advised against this practice. Evers did it anyway. Democratic AG Josh Kaul won't comment. Does he have an alias account? For the love of God, please don't let it be Mickey Mantle.
Here's the bottom line. You either stand for open records laws and open government or you don't. I am consistent. I was publicly critical of Walker for his circumvention of open records laws
at the time. I liked a lot he did but not that. Open government is a great safeguard of our freedoms.
A big problem with this practice is that the public and media wouldn't know the email account exists to request anything from it. And our tax dollars are paying for it, and it's OUR government.
Evers claims they turned over all pertinent emails over the years to open records requesters.
I hope that's true. I sincerely do. But there is zero chance the media would just take a Republican politician's word for it.
The media should check his rhetoric. That's what journalists do. We have filed new open records requests to do so. So has WILL. Maybe the media have. Maybe they will surprise us.
The fact is, that out of approximately 17,000 records, Evers has released only a handful, and they came from DOA, not the governor's office.
The fact is he told Fox 6 in 2020 that he barely sent emails - yet they now say there are about 17,000 to/from the account, possibly including attachments.
The fact is that no one knows when he stopped using it (but multiple of our readers wrote it last night with no bounce back, as did Jim and Dan O'Donnell.)
The fact is they took two months to respond and then did so the day before Thanksgiving.
The fact is their reasons for him using it have shifted slightly (from efficiency to security).
The fact is they told us they couldn't release the email name and then confirmed it was Evers' when questioned by the AP.
The fact is they told the Journal Sentinel it's been inactive for years, but then why did DOA tell us on Nov. 22, 2023, it had to be redacted so Evers could communicate and do his job efficiently? Make that one make sense.
The fact is DOA arbitrarily changed our time frame.
The fact is that they redacted the secret email name and claimed the public has no right to know it.
That all raises concern, but this is the crux of the matter:
Where the rubber meets the road, though, is whether Evers has been complying with open records laws and whether he complied with the judicial order in the 2020 case in which a judge ordered him to turn over all of his emails to Fox 6 for a certain time frame. Fox 6 won't say. We asked.
If he has nothing to hide, we are calling on Evers to:
-Release all of the Warren Spahn emails online or at least to the media.
-Release all open records requests received for his emails or communications on topics discussed in the emails.
-Release his open records responses to those requests.
Let the public compare them.
And bring back Walker's
public records tracking website that you scrapped, governor.
If there is nothing to hide, why not?
Check the rhetoric. We will. Will they?
Release the emails.
https://www.wisconsinrightnow.com/gov-warren-spahn/?feed_id=5507&_unique_id=6565806a696e1
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