Wisconsin: Fitzwalkerstan wins an award (Black Hole Award: for lack of transparency in government)
The Society of Professional Journalism has announced the 2012 winners of the Black Hole Award.
The Society of Professional Journalists launched the Black Hole Award to highlight the most heinous violations of the public's right to know.
By exposing such abuses, SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee seeks to educate the public about their rights and call attention to those who would interfere with openness and transparency.
This year's awards "winners" include the Wisconsin Legislature. All the Society awards are posted
here.
Wisconsin State Legislature
The Wisconsin State Legislature ignored the state's open meetings law in hastily passing a collective bargaining bill in March 2011, then successfully urged the state supreme court to exempt it from this law.
Additionally, tasked with redrawing voter boundaries based on the 2010 Census, the legislature's Republican leadership hammered out new maps behind closed doors, even having their members sign secrecy agreements. The maps were unveiled less than a week before the only public hearing on the bills, which promptly passed. Afterward, the leaders fought court orders to release records showing what they had done, drawing an uncommonly sharp rebuke from a federal judge.
The Wisconsin legislature also passed a law barring even police from knowing who may be carrying concealed weapons. And while opening the state capitol to these weapons, it cracked down on the use of cameras by citizens in the state assembly.
