After investigating several unpublicized UW System Board of Regents teleconference conversations, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager announced Wednesday that regents may have repeatedly broken the Wisconsin open meetings law.
Last year, a quorum of the Regents' Executive Committee participated in several teleconference calls, but failed to notify the public of the phone meetings-a requirement of the open meetings law.
Some of these calls occurred in the days before the committee voted to increase many top UW System administrators' salaries.
However, Lautenschlager said in a statement she will not take legal action against the board, but instructed them to halt such unpublicized meetings. She said her findings indicate regents were not trying to cover up information, but simply did not understand the open meetings law.
\We have advised the Board of Regents that in the future, if a quorum of the Executive Committee will be present on the call or at a meeting, the requirements of the open meetings law be followed,"" Lautenschlager said.
Despite Lautenschlager's disapproval of the meetings, Regent President Toby Marcovich said in a statement Lautenschlager informed him that regents did not violate the meeting law and he agreed regents were not at fault.
""The teleconferences were discontinued shortly after I became board president last year, but the attorney general found the regents acted in good faith in those prior years when the teleconferences had been held,"" he said.
Notwithstanding the discrepancy, Ody Fish, a former regent and member of Common Cause of Wisconsin who requested the investigation with former regent Bert Grover, said he is satisfied with Lautenschlager's actions.
Fish added he does not believe the calls were deliberately secretive, but said unpublicized meetings should not happen and did not occur during the 17 years he served as a regent.
""Neither Bert Grover or myself were looking for damage to the university,"" Fish said. ""It just seems to me what the result of all this is ... [regents] said they didn't do anything wrong but they won't do it again.""
On another occasion last year, regents were accused of improperly notifying the public of a full board meeting, but Lautenschlager found regents not at fault in that case.
