Wis. Lawmaker Wants to Charge for Redactions
Posted Friday, January 25, 2013 --- 4:01 p.m.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A state lawmaker is pushing a bill that would allow government entities to charge record requestors for time spent deleting confidential information.
Rep. Garey Bies' proposal comes after the state Supreme Court last year barred record custodians from charging requestors for redaction expenses. The ruling came out of a dispute between the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper and the Milwaukee Police Department. The newspaper sued after the department demanded thousands of dollars to cover time spent redacting hundreds of incident reports.
Bies, a Republican from Sister Bay, says the taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for a requestor's research project. He sent a memo out to the rest of the Legislature on Friday seeking sponsors for the legislation.
A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had no immediate comment.
Copyright 2013: Associated Press
Read Comments
Comments are posted from viewers like you and do not always reflect the views of this station.-
by James Location: Dells on Jan 28, 2013 at 05:30 AMI have seen first hand how a law enforcement agency can withhold even material a citizen legally allowed to have for over year. Only after the threat of court action was the record released. If the record is about the person involved there should be no charge. How about redaction at the time the record is created? If it were not for newspapers we would have a worthless law on the books that would be ignored by law enforcement.[ Report Abuse ]
Gray Television, Inc. - Copyright © 2002-2013
Designed by Gray Digital Media