Last week Wisconsin Republicans tried to sneak language into a budget bill that would have gutted the state’s open records law. Sadly for them, they got caught and had to withdraw the proposal—which, Gov. Scott Walker hastily assured us, “was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.” Uh huh.
This kind of sleazy behavior is hardly uncommon, but there’s one bit of it that’s equally common and even sleazier:
State Republicans have refused to disclose who inserted the language into the budget legislation, which was approved late Thursday evening. Before dropping the provisions entirely, the governor’s office said Friday it was considering changes to the proposals concerning public records law, but would not comment as to whether Walker was involved in the proposals in the first place.
Here’s my proposal for transparency in legislating: every change in every law has to be attributed to someone. There’s no virgin birth here. Someone wrote this language. Someone asked that it be inserted. Someone agreed to insert it. You have to be pretty contemptuous of your constituents to clam up and pretend that no one knows where it came from.
This kind of puerile buck-passing is way too common, and it needs to stop. Maybe if they knew their names were going to be attached, legislators would think twice before inserting egregiously self-serving crap like this.
