Patrick Marley | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos won't make public a legal contract that will cost taxpayers $850,000, despite a state law meant to ensure government records are widely available.

Advocates for open records say the Rochester Republican is in the wrong and must release a copy of the contract with the Chicago-based law firm Bartlit Beck.

Assembly Republicans recently retained the firm to help defend the state in a long-running lawsuit over legislative district lines they drew in 2011 that have helped them win elections. Taxpayers have already spent more than $2 million in legal fees to draw and defend those maps.

"They should just release the record. I mean, it's clearly a public record and it should be automatic," said Orville Seymer, field operations director of the conservative Citizens for Responsible Government and a member of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council's board.

"I think the denial of this contract is clearly illegal and clearly in bad faith," said Bill Lueders, editor of The Progressive magazine and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

{{props.notification}} {{props.tag}} {{props.expression}} {{props.linkSubscribe.text}} {{#modules.acquisition.inline}}{{/modules.acquisition.inline}} ... Our reporting. Your stories. Get unlimited digital access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now

"If the public is being expected to pay this bill, it has every right to see the agreement."

Vos spokeswoman Kit Beyer declined to release the contract to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, claiming it was subject to attorney-client privilege. The Assembly has made public its contracts with other firms handling redistricting work and Govs. Scott Walker and Jim Doyle routinely released copies of contracts with law firms they hired.

Beyer did not say why Vos believed this contract was different. She has not responded to a Dec. 22 request from the Journal Sentinel to reconsider the denial and did not answer additional questions Monday.

The open records law is designed to make government records easily available to the public, and documents can be withheld only in limited circumstances. When records include information that shouldn't be released, such as Social Security numbers or health information, officials typically redact those portions of the documents and release the rest of them.

Vos in 2015 helped lead an effort to roll back the open records law to allow legislators and other state officials to keep rafts of documents from the public. Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee adopted that proposal with little warning before the July Fourth weekend but abandoned it soon afterward amid a public backlash.

Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, said Vos may be within his rights to keep the public from seeing the contract with Bartlit Beck.

He noted the state Department of Justice has advised public officials that documents with attorney-client privileged information are not subject to the open record law's requirement that they conduct a balancing test to determine whether the benefit of keeping information private outweighs the benefit of making it public.

"They have got a lot of law on their side," Esenberg said of the stance Vos' team has taken.

Others disagreed.

"I don't think they have any leeway to withhold that," Lueders said. "I think that they are in violation of the records law as we speak."

April Barker, a Brookfield attorney and a vice president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said it is unusual for legal contracts to include information that is subject to attorney-client privilege. Lawyers are careful in how they write them because they know that such contracts must sometimes be released as part of litigation, she said.

If the contract does include any privileged information, Vos should black out those portions of the contract and release the remainder of it, she said.

"I can't see any legitimate basis for withholding the entire document," she said.

Releasing the contract would make clear when the Assembly finalized it and explain how the fee arrangement with the firm works. Unlike many firms, Bartlit Beck typically charges flat fees rather than by the hour.

According to Beyer, the state will pay the firm $850,000 to work on the case through trial this spring. She has not said what the firm would charge for any appeal work.

Lester Pines, a Madison attorney representing Democratic lawmakers in the redistricting lawsuit, said Vos has no grounds for withholding the contract.

"That's the public's money," he said. "It's not Vos' money. ... He doesn't want the public to know how he's spending their money."

Litigation long-running

Litigation has been ongoing over the election maps since lawmakers began working on them in 2011. In October, Assembly leaders with the help of Bartlit Beck asked to intervene in the case in part because they feared Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel could lose his November election.

Schimel lost to Democrat Josh Kaul and a week later the court allowed Assembly Republicans to intervene in the case.

Kaul has said he believes the state should continue to defend the Republican-drawn maps. Now, both Kaul's Department of Justice and the Assembly's private attorneys will perform that work.

A lawsuit over the maps filed in 2011 resulted in changes to two Assembly districts on Milwaukee's south side.

In a second lawsuit brought in 2015, a panel of three federal judges determined the maps violated the U.S. Constitution because they are so heavily tilted to Republicans.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June determined the Democrats who filed the lawsuit didn't have legal standing and sent the case back to the panel. Democrats added plaintiffs and adjusted their arguments to renew the lawsuit.

A trial is scheduled for April and the case is expected to eventually return to the U.S. Supreme Court.