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Madison— Political appointees at the state Department of Natural Resources are screening some requests made under the state's open records law by journalists and environmentalists, keeping watch over these sensitive requests that deal with figures in politics, big livestock farms and oversight of Wisconsin's land and water.

The DNR's practice of looping in top appointees on records marked as "sensitive" by agency staff isn't necessarily illegal or unethical.

But with the DNR already facing a public records lawsuit from an environmental group, there'll be close scrutiny of the cases in which political appointees have given additional sign off on document releases that had already been vetted by agency staff. The examples turned up in an open records request by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In one case, the DNR delayed for three weeks while staff waited in large part for former assistant deputy secretary Mike Bruhn to weigh in on responding to an Appleton Post-Crescent reporter's request for any hunting licenses taken out by U.S. Senate candidates Russ Feingold, a Democrat, and Ron Johnson, a Republican.

As it turns out, there aren't any records. The agency eventually released that benign piece of information and no story was written. Under state law, public officials must respond to records requests "as soon as practicable and without delay."

Joel Christopher, the vice president of news for the USA Today Network-Wisconsin, which includes the Post-Crescent, said the handling of the request caught his attention.

"Certainly as a media organization and as a citizen of Wisconsin you have some concern when you see that politics is potentially a factor in how an open records request is handled because clearly it should not be," Christopher said.

The DNR says it's following the law in all cases.

"The practice of notifying agency leadership about the impending release of sensitive open records requests is intended to ensure that DNR's open records process has been followed and that the documents have undergone proper internal legal review," spokesman George Althoff said. "DNR's goal is to handle all open records requests in a timely and efficient manner and in compliance with the open records law."

An attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, a law firm that handles natural resources cases, isn't convinced. Midwest Environmental is suing the DNR for delays of months in responding to its own records requests for documents on the regulation of microscopic air particles, wetland permits and information on large-scale dairy farms known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

"(Hunting) licenses are certainly public records and there does not appear to be any legitimate reason to withhold these records or any basis for sending the request to the secretary's office for review," Sarah Geers, an attorney with Midwest Environmental, said of the Post-Crescent request.

Althoff didn't directly address why agency appointees are signing off on some requests but said it's important for top DNR officials to know about "sensitive open records requests that could result in news coverage, could result in litigation involving the agency, or could be about high-profile topics of interest to the agency."

This latest disclosure follows a string of separate efforts by state officials over the past year to limit citizen access to public documents.

Faced with a fierce backlash, state officials at an obscure board rescinded a recent move that had been used to limit access to some records by defining them to be of only transitory significance and allowing them to be destroyed.

And in July, just before Independence Day weekend, Republicans on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee unexpectedly amended the state budget to put sweeping limits on open records. Under withering bipartisan criticism, GOP leaders quickly retreated and undid their action.

Gov. Scott Walker's office also has withheld some records that include internal deliberations, saying that releasing them could inhibit the free exchange of ideas within his administration. State law doesn't specifically recognize that as a reason for withholding records.

Walker says his office and his administration follow the state's open records law.

Within just several weeks last fall, Bruhn, the former No. 3 official at the DNR, and Secretary Cathy Stepp answered multiple questions from staff about whether to respond to records requests — some of which had already been vetted.

In one case, the DNR's open records coordinator, Kathleen Patten, sent Bruhn a records request on a Jackson County sand mining operation.

"The records for this request are ready to go out, and they have already been reviewed by legal," Patten said.

In another case, Bruhn told staff to do only the minimum for an open records request relating to perch in Lake Michigan by Steven Alt of Glendale, saying he was on an agency "do not respond list."

"Please ensure we do NOT create anything for Steven Alt. Also make sure we charge him appropriately. He is one person on our do not respond to list due to the sheer volume of contacts and correspondences," Bruhn wrote to Patten and a former agency spokesman in a Sept. 18 email.

Alt, an angler who has been concerned for years about losses in Lake Michigan's yellow perch population, said he has probably had hundreds of contacts over the past decade with the DNR as he looked into the perch problem and related issues such as commercial fishing.

"I suspected that, but it's nice to know," Alt said of the do not respond list.

Alt said he does continue to get some information from the DNR, but only through records requests.

In the case of the U.S. Senate candidate, reporter Madeleine Behr requested the hunting license records from the DNR on Aug. 17.

On Aug. 26, Patten, the agency records coordinator, asked about the request in an email to other agency officials.

"It is in my court," Bruhn responded.

On Sept. 9, Behr asked again about her request and Patten immediately asked Bruhn about it, noting that there were no hunting licenses but that there were other licenses held by one of the two candidates.

"So what was the consensus on this request? (If I'm) supposed to respond with the fishing licenses (and one boat registration), or I'm I supposed to respond that we located no records responsive to their request (since there were no hunting licenses)?" Patten asked.

"The latter. There were no records responsive to the request," Bruhn emailed back.

Patten responded to Behr that same day, saying that the agency had no records of any hunting licenses and making no mention of the other licenses.