For the 19th consecutive year, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is bestowing its annual Openness in Government Awards, or Opees, meant to recognize outstanding efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government, as well as highlight impediments.
The awards are being announced in advance of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 16-22 and will be presented today, March 6, at the Wisconsin Openness Awards Dinner in Madison as part of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association’s annual convention.
Awards are being given in six categories. The winners are:
Public Openness Advocate (Popee): Milwaukee Police Sensitive Crimes Division and Open Records Division. When Jessica McBride’s UW-Milwaukee journalism class launched a full-semester project to delve into unsolved missing persons cases, she was impressed by the cooperation she received from Milwaukee police, especially Capt. Erin Mejia and Sgt. Jason Kotarak. “They provided the full, unredacted missing person files for each case submitted by the students in just a few weeks,” McBride wrote in her nomination. Credit goes also to the students, who produced an impressive collection of stories, “Missing in Milwaukee.”…