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Local watchdog group hounding district for documents
By PAUL SLOTH
Journal Times
RACINE — Members of a local taxpayers group weren’t satisfied with the report the Racine Unified School Board released in August following an investigation into a district contract with a private consulting firm.
Now, Jim Morrison, president of the Racine Taxpayers Association, has enlisted the help of Citizens for Responsible Government, the Milwaukee-area government watchdog group, to navigate the state’s Open Records laws. Morrison wants to review the documents used to create the seven-page report questioning Hicks’ negotiation of Public Business Consulting Group’s contract. Former superintendent Tom Hicks hired the firm to manage the district’s finances.
“I consider the Reinhart report to be vague. I want to see why it’s vague,” Morrison said. “I want to put some meat on the bones.”
Orville Seymer, field operations director for CRG, has been working with Morrison to try getting public documents related to the investigation from the district.
The district rejected the request.
“It appears they’re stonewalling for who knows what reason. I’m going to continue to try to get the records,” Seymer said. “Why are they trying to withhold the records? I’d like to know what the reason is.”
Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, often advises people to narrow their requests for public documents in an effort to get what they’re asking for.
“There are occasions where individuals or groups will seek a rather large number of documents,” Lueders said. “It appears in this case that they are looking for a needle in the haystack. They are technically entitled to the haystack.”
School Board member Don Nielsen, chairman of the audit committee that recommended the investigation, said he thought both Morrison and Seymer had rescinded their requests after talking with Chris Ware, a Reinhart attorney, who reportedly told both men it would cost a significant amount of money to retrieve the documents from Deloitte.
“I wasn’t aware that it was still an issue, but I’ll look into it,” Nielsen said. “We’re not trying to be difficult when we say it has to come from Deloitte. We asked for an investigation and they collected certain things. Some of the documents I’m assuming would be electronic. It’s not like there is a file at central office with 20,000 documents.”
Lueders said there’s more public interest in what school boards do than in other entities of government, but elected officials often don’t have a working knowledge of the state laws pertaining to records.
“The attorneys for school districts ought to be advising records custodians to be as open as they can,” Lueders said. “When you elect a new school board member someone in the district should sit them down and say, ‘Here are your obligations. This is the law.’ ”
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