The court rejected arguments that the Legislature changed the open records law when it  approved labor contracts the prohibited employees’ names from being made public. (Those contracts were negotiated during the short, mostly forgettable McCallum administration.)

A decision the other way would have set the terrible precedent of allowing laws to be changed silently and secretly, without public notice or debate, to satisfy whatever special interest can get their hooks into a willing legislator.

Sounds a bit like the state budget process, doesn’t it?

WisDOT Secretary Frank Busalacchi, one of the most concrete-pourin’, greenhouse-gas promotin’, water-pollutin’, unimaginative secretaries of transportation around, allegedly is under consideration for a post in the Obama administration. Busalachhi, somehow, has built himself a reputation nationally as a rail advocate, although he really sucks at it here in his home state.

From Traffic World:

Also under consideration are two members of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, Steve Heminger and Frank Busalacchi.

Heminger, named to the commission by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission and once was a congressional staffer.

Transportation industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Busalacchi, Wisconsin state secretary of transportation since 2003 and a former secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters local in Milwaukee, is a more likely candidate for head of the Federal Railroad Administration.

Selecting Busalacchi for anything wouldn’t be a move to the right by Obama; it would be a move to lunacy. How many times has Busalacchi embarrassed his boss, Gov. Doyle? Are we talking about the $685,000 Marquette Interchange web site? The open records violations? Let’s put that all on the national stage and see how it plays.