Release The Walkergate Files!

The following is a statement from the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council:

As a rule, emails created by public officials that discuss government business and policies are the public's property and should be available to the public.

But hundreds, and possibly thousands, of emails created in secret by some of former Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's office staff are closed to public access. They were unearthed during a John Doe investigation of some of Walker's aides and a judge has ordered the material from the investigation not be released to the public.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council urges the judge who presided over the John Doe investigation to reconsider his secrecy order and release the staff emails because the court proceedings revealed they discuss important county government policies and issues, including patient abuse at a county-run mental health facility and the death of a teenager killed when a concrete slab fell on him in a county parking facility.

The three-year John Doe investigation was recently completed. There's no longer a reason for information generated by public officials on the public’s dime that discusses the public's business to remain secret.

Additionally, the Council calls on the Milwaukee County Board and County Executive Chris Abele to reclaim ownership and take custody of these records, since they should have been turned over to Walker’s successor as state law requires when he left office. See State Statute 19.21(2). These records would then be subject to release under the Public Records Law.

This issue was the subject of an editorial this week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Council hopes that others in the media will take similar stands.

Needless to say, I completely concur with this statement. It should not matter if it is embarrassing to Scott Walker or makes things difficult for the county to defend itself in a lawsuit stemming from the O'Donnell Park tragedy or Walker's mismanagement of the mental health complex.  If they screwed up, they should be held accountable, but in the court of law and in the public's eye.

And while they're at it, they also should roll out the Mystery Dumpster O'Fun. Who knows what kind of things were stuffed into that before it was locked up and put into hiding. But we can guess what we'd might find:

Walkergate: What's In Your Dumpster?

Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a column up with a batch of three stories in it.

The one story that my esteemed lefty blogger colleagues caught on to was the story of Scott Walker's hypocrisy regarding how governor's should behave when they have bad-acting underlings.

But it appears that might not be the most interesting one of Bice's stories.

He also had one about a mystery dumpster that is now part of Walkergate:

The John Doe investigation of Walker's tenure as county executive has taken many odd twists and turns.

But what to make of this?

Last week, Frank Busalacchi, head of the county Transportation and Public Works Department, was asked by investigators for a particular county Dumpster.

"All they asked was if I could move it, and we did," Busalacchi said Thursday. "I think they wanted to look through it."

Was it full or empty?

"I have no idea," he said. "They asked me that, and I said, 'You know, I just got here in November. I don't know what's in a Dumpster on the side of the courthouse. I have no idea.'"

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who is overseeing the John Doe probe, wouldn't provide any further insight.

"I have no comment," Landgraf said.

Well, I might have some more information on that.

From what I have learned, the dumpster was indeed moved and had to have a lock broken or cut open. Inside, the dumpster was reportedly full of papers of some sort. What kind is unknown, but it took a number of deputy sheriffs and staff from the District Attorney's office to go through and they are probably still sorting through them

Your guess at what those papers are would be as good as mine, but the first thing I thought of was the missing files that were reported shortly after Walker and his entourage left the courthouse at the end of 2010:

The dozens of Walker's file cabinets were virtually emptied of their contents by the end of last month, and 16 bankers' boxes of records retrieved this week from storage by aides to Holloway appear well short of the total paper-load once held in the courthouse's third-floor executive suite.

A tour this week of the sparsely staffed offices revealed banks of empty file drawers, save a set of various bureaucratic forms, county budget books and one stack of papers on various issues left in the office of Fran McLaughlin, who was Walker's county spokeswoman.

The empty drawers, coupled with the absence of any message or memo telling the whereabouts of Walker's office documents - and at least two bins of shredded paper left by Walker staffers - were perplexing, Mester said.

It was probably those or leftover copies of the Milwaukee County First's Survival Guide to Scott Walker's Courthouse.

Sources have told me that the authorities knew just where to go to find this dumpster, which originally made me wonder if they had put it there, until I learned of the need to force the lock. That would tell me that maybe one of the other persons of interest in this ongoing investigation has cut a deal and turned state witness and told them where to find said mystery dumpster'o'fun.  Remember that Darlene Wink has already agreed to testify about the "destruction of digital evidence."

Now, granted, a lot of the details are vague and a lot of pieces to this latest puzzle are obviously still missing, but it does not appear to be a good omen for Walker as he is going to be meeting with the investigators himself in the near future.

The one thing that I can tell you with some certainty is that it definitely appears that the most eye-popping twists to this story are still in store for us.

But wouldn't it be a form of poetic justice if the contents of that dumpster is what puts Walker's political career, and his demented ideological agenda, in the dumpster instead?