Part of our Wisconsin in America at 250 series
Wisconsin entered statehood with one of the strongest free expression guarantees in the nation. Article I, Section 3 of the Wisconsin Constitution declared that every person may freely speak, write, and publish on any subject, and that the press shall be free. That language did not appear out of nowhere. It was forged by a loud, unapologetic frontier press that spent the territorial era fighting corrupt governors, exposing shady land speculation, and demanding accountability before we were even a state.
Early papers like the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Green Bay Advocate, and the Waukesha Freeman did not exist to play nice or rewrite press releases. They were built to be watchdogs. They set a permanent standard for generations of Wisconsin journalists: you serve the public, not the politicians.
During the Progressive Era, newspapers doubled down. Muckrakers exposed deep rot in Milwaukee city government, backed Robert La Follette against corporate railroad monopolies, and forced open the doors to public meetings. Decades later, when the Legislature codified Wis. Stat. § 19.31, they declared that a fully informed electorate is the only way a representative democracy actually functions.
The politicians were just catching up to what reporters had been practicing for half a century.
For decades, Wisconsin courts built a legal framework that protected those values. In Bilder v. Township of Delavan (1983), the Wisconsin Supreme Court made it clear that public records cannot be withheld simply because the contents are embarrassing or politically inconvenient. In Journal/Sentinel, Inc. v. Arreola (1991), the court reinforced public access to court proceedings. In Hempel v. City of Baraboo (2005), the court clarified how privacy interests must be weighed against the public’s right to know. And in New Richmond News v. City of New Richmond (2015), the Court of Appeals blocked local governments from using informal rolling quorums to dodge the Open Meetings Law. These cases built a durable foundation for transparency in Wisconsin.
Or that was the thought.
The digital age brought a new set of fights. In Prehn v. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (2022), the Court of Appeals ruled that text messages about public business are public records, even when sent on personal phones. That decision recognized that transparency has to evolve with technology.
But that same year, Friends of Frame Park v. City of Waukesha dramatically changed how attorney fees are awarded in public records lawsuits. The ruling made it far harder for ordinary citizens to recover costs when they sue for access, weakening one of the few enforcement tools that kept agencies honest.
This entire history proves that the promise of open government is never self-executing. The text on a page of a document written long ago means nothing without regular people doing the heavy lifting. It takes reporters, editors, and everyday citizens refusing to take a bureaucratic “no” for an answer.
As America marks 250 years, Wisconsin stands as a reminder that transparency takes constant, exhausting vigilance. It requires people who are willing to do the sometimes uncomfortable work of digging for the truth, even when those in power are shielded by apathy, cynicism, and short attention spans.
