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THE LAKE GENEVA SNAKE PIT
The city of Lake Geneva, not having enough on its collective leadership plate, decided to open Pandora’s Box and court personal and public disaster with seemingly no rational reason whatsoever. Last week, the city clerk of Lake Geneva, supposedly responding to fifteen citizens of the city, sent out release confirmation to a Freedom of Information request, for the personnel file of Linda Frame, former Harbormaster for the city and now alderperson of the second district.
Linda won her election earlier in the year against another very well thoughts of alderperson named John Halverson. Apparently, Mayor Mayor does not like or want to tolerate Linda Frame sitting on the council as an alderperson and consistently voting against the things Mayor Mayor is trying to get passed. Fifteen people were ‘raised up,’ like Zombies from the dead, and steered to city hall where they filed their FOIA request. Linda is the only elected member of the council who’s worked as a regular employee of the city. Linda was fired by Tom Earle, head of Public Works, for supposedly not following his directives (in his own words).
The Zombies want whatever information they can glean from the file to do whatever Zombies do with such fodder, but city powers well above and beyond these ‘walking dear’ creatures, have other needs, wants and desires. Those powers did not think things through. Almost no one, other than probably Dan Draper, the city attorney, understood that Wisconsin statutes allow for the public to FOIA personnel files unless the person or employee whose file is requested file for and gains a court order stopping the release until an opened case is heard in court. That’s an enormous expense for a regular employee to be hit with, especially since the court hearing can be fought by the persons or Zombies requesting the data.
The Geneva Shore Report staff had no idea that city employee files could be so easily and rapidly filed for. On Monday, a staff member went to the front desk and filed for personnel files on Tom Earle, Head of Public Works, Laura Pisarsic, City Comptroller, David Nord, City Administrator and Lana Knopf, City Clerk. These FOIA requests were made primarily to send the city leadership a message. Using the information in these files for political reasons is not only low-class, but also thankless and nasty. The paper today is publishing the names of the Zombies for your own consideration. Part of the Pandora’s Box opening is also legal. Newspapers, like the Geneva Shore Report, and other formally designated media, are protected by a quite extensive and effective defamation law, wherein the media is really tough to file against in the state of Wisconsin.
Elected officials, appointed city personnel and the public are not so protected. Linda’s angry letter back to the city, warning anyone using data found in her released file to hurt her will suffer from both criminal and civil action if that is used to hurt her in any way. The Geneva Shore Report staff was unaware of how easy it might be to access a city employee personnel file nor that the person who’s the subject of the file would be in such a nearly hopeless legal situation to defend him, her or themselves from such an attack and usage of many times rumor-derived, gossip-determined and opinionated stuff that might be in such a file.
The Zombies who filed for this information, with respect to Linda Frame, need to watch more Zombie movies to see what the results normally are for their efforts. Meanwhile, Mr. Earle, Ms. Pisarsic, Ms. Kropf, and Mr. Nord can all check into getting attorneys so they can better sleep at night through the rest of a hotter summer than they expected (and made) it to be…but that’s after, of course, they all run to the city clerk to read and find out what’s inside their own files. The GSR X-Files investigators are working hard to discover if elected officials have personnel files that might be accessible, as well. Why personnel files are available to the public at all is the subject of a future article.
