Council takes up records request, no other proposed changes to Act 235 expected.

Byline: Erika Strebel, erika.strebel@wislawjournal.com

The Judicial Council discussed on Friday the best way to respond to a request for records related to a recent overhaul of Wisconsin's rules of civil procedure.

The request from the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council seeks allrecords related to 2017 Act 235, including emails between council members and drafts. That act, adopted last year, made a slew of changes to the state's civil-litigation rules, including its rules of civil procedure. The open-records request came last month from the Wisconsin Civil Justice Council,an organization of businesses and professional groups that bills itself as working to promote fairness in the state's civil justice system and that was one of the biggest supporters of Act 235.

When lawmakers last year were debating the legislation that eventually became Act 235, members of the Judicial Council had asked last year for more time to study it. On Friday, the members said Wisconsin's open-records law compels them to answer the justice council's request but debated how to best go about responding, what records they should provide and how long anyone should take fulfilling the request.

"We're not staffed," said Tom Shriner, a council member. "We don't have a budget. We don't have a place to keep records. We should respond to the extent that we can and provide what we have, but I don't know what else we can say. We're in this situation because we're entirely at least for those of us who don't have public jobs that put us on the council volunteers."

Eugene Gasiorkiewicz, another member, said many of the council's meetings have been recorded and that those recordings should be provided to the Wisconsin Civic Justice Council. He also said that if Judicial Council members are going to be expected to provide emails from their individual accounts, they need to be told of that obligation soon.

"This takes high priority," Gasiorkiewicz said. "We can't just let this sit. How logistically are we going to do this?"

Duane Harlow, the attorney general's designee to...