The week since the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee unveiled its plans to exempt the Legislature from the state Open Records Law has been fascinating for political geeks.

It is interesting that the coverage of nearly every media outlet in this state, including this award-winning publication, has found only two people under the dome willing to defend it publicly. The Wisconsin State Journal reported:

Rep. John Nygren, co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, said the plan had the input and support of legislative leaders from both houses. …

Nygren, R-Marinette, said in an interview that the goal of the proposed changes was to protect constituents, and he said news outlets have misrepresented the intent.

“In my view, there should be some privacy for constituents to contact my office. You guys don’t give a (expletive) about that,” Nygren said. “All you want to do is make this about, somehow, that we’re stifling transparency for the press.”

Speaking in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio earlier Monday, Vos, R-Rochester, echoed that reasoning and said there was “nothing sinister” about the open records changes or lawmakers’ decision to scrap them less than 48 hours after they were made public.

“We want to ensure that if somebody writes their legislator, they should know that the comments that they make and the words that they say have some ability to be protected, so they can’t be targeted,” said Vos, R-Rochester.

Nygren is correct that we in the media “don’t give a (expletive) about that.” The unnamed State Journal editorial writer(s) followed up with:

It’s certainly true that this newspaper will always champion open government to help our readers — including Nygren’s constituents — find out what their state and local leaders are up to.

The State Journal, for instance, used public records last year to show that a multimillionaire GOP donor was the driving force behind a controversial child-support bill, which one of Nygren’s colleagues quickly dropped after our article ran.

It’s also true, during the Capitol protests over collective bargaining restrictions in 2011 that the State Journal went to court for public records showing doctors were writing fraudulent sick notices to teachers skipping school to rally. We don’t remember Nygren complaining about that.

Nygren has done good work passing laws to stem Wisconsin’s heroin scourge. Were communications to him on this topic unfairly scrutinized? We doubt it.

Newspapers rarely print constituent letters or emails unless something suspicious or nefarious is going on. Yet public access for every citizen, not just the press, is an important way to keep elected officials honest, especially when they’re being heavily influenced by special interests and wealthy campaign donors.

Moreover, Wisconsin’s open records law includes a balancing test. Nygren and other public officials can weigh the law’s broad presumption of openness against potential harm to constituents if truly personal information becomes public. And if there’s a dispute over what should be public, the courts can decide.

The State Journal did not mention — but I did — the genesis of this ridiculousness, which wasn’t in Nygren’s party. Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D–Middleton) lost his bid to keep the email addresses of more than 1,000 government employees who emailed him during the Act 10 debate from the eyes of the MacIver Institute, which wanted to observe government employees using government resources during what appeared to be work hours. At a minimum a fair appraisal of this traveshamockery would observe the benefit not only to Republicans, but to legislative Democrats too.

The State Journal also didn’t bring up — but I did — another case in which the Open Records Law benefited Republicans, by revealing the signers of petitions to recall Walker and other Republicans during Recallarama. That remains a sore subject in some quarters because it revealed government employees, including members of the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office (last seen persecuting Republicans and conservatives), judges and members of the Madison media.

Nygren didn’t bring up, as far as I have read, a rationale for why the Open Records Law should be changed more than three decades after a Democratic-controlled Legislature and Republican governor made it law. The abuses Nygren seems to be concerned with have been possible every day since it became law in 1981, because mail to legislators has always been subject to the Open Records Law, just as email is. The difference, I suppose, is that most Republicans seem to look at the news media as the monolithic enemy.

On the other hand, the State Journal didn’t bring up why people should trust the media to do the right thing, given the number of media people — including those who get paychecks across the building from the State Journal at The C(r)apital Times — who do their work with the malign intent that concerns Nygren, not to mention their ideological sycophants, including whoever called in the bomb threat to the Capitol Wednesday night. These hyperpoliticized times of ours provide motivation for ideological warfare, because political battles must be won by any means necessary. Ask Rep. Gordon “You’re F—ING DEAD!” Hintz about that.

State Rep. Todd Novak (R–Dodgeville) was quoted thusly by an excellent weekly newspaper:

“It can be a problem,” said Novak. “I’ve had constituents that have contacted me with some pretty personal issues” that involved the departments of Revenue and Workforce Development, and Office of Unemployment Compensation. “They do give you some personal information, which is open records.”

But, Novak added, “The way to address it is to make it very narrow in scope. … Coming from a newspaper background, I can’t see any newspaper in the state publishing personal information. It is an issue and it’s concern of many of us, but it needs to be very, very narrow.”

I hope Novak’s assertion is correct, but I’m not positive it is. The question comes down to whom do you trust more — politicians or the news media. That’s probably like choosing between vomiting and diarrhea for many people, but keep in mind that all of us pay elected officials’ salaries, but subscribing to newspapers is your own choice. As I wrote before, if a change cannot be made that is “very, very narrow,” then the Open Records law should be kept as is. (For that matter, the Open Meetings and Open Records laws should be added to the state Constitution to prevent the Legislature from fixing that which only the Legislature thinks is broken.)

There is another change to the Open Records Law that Walker needs to veto — a provision that allows applicants to UW System jobs to keep their names secret. Certainly very few people want to let their employer know they’re attempting to leave their employer. But in my experience, this is commonplace in the public sector, and I have not observed negative blowback for someone in the public sector (or in higher education) looking for new employment. Even if that were not the case, it’s immaterial because our tax dollars pay UW System salaries and fund the UW System. Public dollars, public scrutiny.