Big trouble in little Kronenwetter, Part I

A real-time behind-the-scenes look at a major records request investigation that may or may not go anywhere

As is the case with many stories, this one began with a tip. Staff were leaving Kronenwetter at an alarming rate. There was major conflict between elected leaders there and staff members. I might want to look into it.

That was very early this year. I put in a pretty sizable open records request in January, and the village informed me that it would take awhile. With a record-breaking election on the horizon (the most candidates to ever run for village board), I was willing to wait. I knew this would be one of those stories that would take awhile.

We had a brief battle over whether or not the village could charge me for redactions. The village informed me I would be charged the cost of redacting the documents, which meant going over them with an attorney. (Which means they would be very expensive indeed.)

One of the things you learn as a journalist is that just because something is written in law, it doesn’t always mean officials will follow that law. Sometimes to you need to fight. I worked at a paper that once sued the local police and fire commission (outside of this area) because they wouldn’t release names of finalists for the fire chief position, even though the law was quite clear their names were open record.

In this case I didn’t need to sue, but I did point to the state Department of Justice’s Public Records Compliance Guide. It states quite clearly that municipalities and other records custodians can’t charge for the cost of redacting documents. Fortunately, that was enough.

Getting the documents

In January I requested the emails of village board members Joel Staub and Ken Charneski, and Administrative Policy Committee member Paul Jaeger. I requested them from the years 2020 and 2021. I was told this would yield an interesting insight into Kronenwetter’s situation.

(A quick note: This is where I was directed but I consider it a starting point — this surely would reveal other links and threads I could follow up on. Put more simply, just I’m requesting their emails, doesn’t mean I am targeting them specifically. It could just lead to more threads to pull on. In journalism, where you start isn’t always where you end up.)

Kronenwetter isn’t a huge municipality. It took them a long time, especially with a new clerk (long-time clerk Cindra Falkowski received my initial request but was set to leave the village a week later, one more staff member to leave the village).

The email with the finished version of my records request came back in April, three months later. I didn’t even realize it was actually the request itself because the email contained a pdf letter saying the village was indeed complying with my records request and how. It seemed like mostly standard legalese that indicated fulfillment was coming; only after checking the email again before reaching back out to the village clerk did I see a link and password for the actual records at the very bottom of the pdf letter. So that killed another three weeks.

The actual records

I’m still in the process of going through the records. In fact, I’d be lucky if I were 10% done. I will say this is probably the biggest jumble of a records fulfillment I’ve ever seen.

The organizational logic is hard for me to fathom. But worse is that not only are they extremely repetitive (sometimes I scroll through nearly an entire file set to get to one particular new email in the thread, and sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a new email in the thread).

The most frustrating thing is that sometimes the thread narrows — you’ve probably seen this online where each new email or post narrows to demonstrate that it’s a new post in the thread. Several times already this narrows until it’s literally a single-file line of letters running down the page, which makes it virtually incomprehensible. I’ve requested hundreds of records in my career, if not thousands, and this is the first time I’ve seen this.

See what I mean?

What I’ve seen so far

I’ve still made such little progress into the records that I can’t say one way or another whether they confirm what I’ve been told about Kronenwetter. The picture the emails paint so far is that Ken Charneski asks a lot of questions, questions a lot of what Kronenwetter staff members do, and especially scrutinizes when it comes to village finances. Joel Straub appears to do so similarly but perhaps in a harsher tone.

So far, I don’t see anything that couldn’t also be said of a Wausau City Council member. Wausau City Council members such as Tom Kilian and the recently dethroned Deb Ryan questioned staff a lot too. Dennis Smith, who hasn’t been on the council for two cycles now, also did so. His conflicts with former Community Development Director Chris Schock is something I and other media outlets covered at length.

From a staff member’s perspective, I could see how Charneski’s emails might seem like a pain; like a boss who won’t leave you alone. But that’s not outside the bounds of a board member’s role. Charneski has that right, and as of yet I haven’t come across anything inappropriate.

One particular thread I’ve pulled out so far concerns Trump signs in the village. Last summer, tracing through the emails, Village President Chris Voll’s wife sent an email to village staff asking about the legality of keeping Trump signs up in the village, whether or not there were limits to such activity. Some of them appear to have been somewhat vulgar, or so some of the emails imply. And since it was 2021, it was well outside the election cycle.

Village Administrator Richard Downey consulted with the village attorney to get clarification on whether or not there was anything the village could or should do about such signs. The attorney responded that for the most part they’re protected by the first amendment.

In emails to Downey and between several village staff members, Straub questioned whether the administrator should take on the expense of consulting an attorney when the village’s ordinances should be clear. Charneski felt Holly Voll was getting special treatment because she was the wife of Chris Voll, the village president. Staff said they’d gotten a number of complaints about the signs.

The emails reveal that Charneski and Holly Voll had a phone conversation on the topic. He provided a summary of the conversation but she responded she didn’t agree with the summary (but either didn’t offer corrections or I have yet to unveil it in another thread.

An administrator in trouble?

On May 9 the village of Kronenwetter went into closed session to discuss the administrator’s performance. No action was taken.

When I reached out to Village President Chris Voll afterward, he said the closed session was to talk to the new board members about the village administrator’s performance. He made it sound routine, but when I asked if it was a one-and-done, he said there were potentially more reviews coming.

In the emails there was some implication that Downey had inadvertently outed Holly by releasing her name when the village complaints form she utilized was supposed to have been anonymous. Interestingly, that came from Charneski, though his concerns appeared to be about mistakes in general. “If Mr. Downey inadvertently released emails revealing a behind-the-scenes effort to target Mr. Tapper for his personal views, then what other surreptitious activity might be going on at taxpayer expense that we might not know about, that is aimed at other residents or trustees because of their views?”

Another email thread points to Charneski being upset with Downey because a chance to consolidate debt at a better interest rate came up and according to Charneski, Downey missed the chance.

More to go

This is far from the end of the story. This was a really early look at the discovery stage of a records request investigation. I debated exactly how to handle this. Should I wait until I’ve meticulously gone through every single email in this gigantic records set before publishing anything? Am I leaving the door open for another reporter to request the request by documenting it like this?

When I was more active in writing novels, one thing experienced novelists used to laugh about is new writers being worried about their ideas being stolen. A novel is a collection of a small amount of idea mixed with a whole lot of work, only to produce a novel that you now need to spend another giant block of time marketing. Stealing an idea is like stealing the steering wheel to a ship. You’re basically stealing the key to a shed full of work to do.

I see this as similar. I thought I would document the process in this series, and reveal it to you as I learn more. Because frankly, it’s going to take me a long time to go through all these. And it could be a story about how a records request leads to nowhere.

Or it could be a documentation of how a journalist puts together a huge investigative story in near real time.

Much of the work of journalists goes unpublished. The best journalism comes out of hunches and curiosities. Often you dig into something and learn there’s nothing there. Sometimes the effect is to keep elected leaders and government officials honest, even if there isn’t anything to report.

This happened once with the North Central Health Care project. It looked like a construction firm had bid an extraordinarily low big with a giant contingency, against the county’s own policies. When I looked into it, it turned out they were forced to resubmit their bid following the guidelines, and were still selected. So, no story, but the impact is “we’re watching.” For all I know, this could be a whole lot of nothing, or a small story.

UPDATE: I initially sent this post to paid subscribers only. It’s now available to everyone. Of course, since I started the project it turned into a huge story. Starting with Part II we really get into the meat of the series, and the trouble that has been brewing in Kronenwetter.

Big Trouble in Little Kronenwetter, Part II

(Note: The title is a tongue in cheek reference to Big Trouble in Little China, a campy Kurt Russell film.)