Your Sunday January 3 article "Doing the public's business in private" described Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher as "regarded as one of the more aggressive in the state on open meetings complaints". Hogwash!

In late 2001, Bucher took four months to respond to my open records complaint against Jefferson County's inability to deliver records regarding the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation (JCEDC).

Bucher never bothered to examine the records themselves, yet he declared my request invalid. He demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of the Open Records law.

I appealed to the state Attorney General's office. In November 2002 a letter from Assistant Attorney General Mary Woolsey Schlaefer essentially reversed Bucher's opinion, declaring that I should have received the records I requested.

The article also mentions complaints filed against the Town of Merton. When I requested records from their office, I encountered tremendous resistance, ignorance of the Open Records law, and illegally high and arbitrary document copying charges.

The Open Records law is a highly effective method of curtailing government. Due in part to my investigations, Jefferson County and its cities have disbanded two economic development organizations and reorganized a third. My digging revealed tens of thousands of dollars in mismanagement. All this is documented on the web at www.goJefferson.com.

Sincerely,