Oshkosh not the only city to violate open meetings law; city attorney takes proper approach

The City of Oshkosh has been dinged in recent history for violations of open meetings laws, including meeting notices that were improperly written and meetings or portions thereof that were just simply illegally convened. The usual response from our city attorney has been that it’s just “one attorney’s position.” There’s been a real reluctance (i.e., refusal) on the part of Warren Kraft and his office to admit they were wrong or at the very least should have erred on the side of caution.

On the complete opposite side of the coin comes the attorney for the City of Stevens Point. It has been reported in the Stevens Point Journal that the city, under the direction of its mayor, was in violation of Wisconsin’s Open Meeting laws. But according to the article, the Stevens Point city attorney told the mayor that a recently-held meeting of the city’s Eco-municipality Task Force was in violation of state law and, though the mayor seems to think there is some ambiguity in the law, the city attorney simply said that’s not so and changes will be forthcoming in the future.