Wishful thinking

A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that state legislators cannot witthhold the names and email addresses of constituents who contact them.

Unless appealed, the ruling would require Sen. Jon Erpenbach, a Democrat, to turn over constiuent names. He says disclosing people's names to disclosure would subject them to "McCarthy-like" harassment.

However, the judges ruled that “public awareness of ‘who’ is attempting to influence public policy is essential for effective oversight of our government.”

Meanwhile, the Virginia General Assembly didn't even let out of committee a bill that would have narrowed the scope of the broadly applied working papers exemption our state legislators  enjoy. I mean, really, really enjoy.
 
As if listening in on the testimony given by the bill's patron, the Wisconsin judges noted that "the legislature wrote the open records law to apply to ‘elected official(s)’ generally, without any special exception for individual state legislators or houses of the legislature.”
 
No special exceptions? Hmmmmmm.

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