Tony Evers' use of alternate 'Warren Spahn' email follows precedent set by Scott Walker, other governors

MADISON - Conservatives are raising concerns about Gov. Tony Evers using a pseudonym to communicate via email — a longstanding and bipartisan practice Wisconsin governors have engaged in for years to communicate about public business.

The concerns come after conservative website Wisconsin Right Now published a now-defunct email address used by Evers to communicate with other government officials about public business. The email, warren.spahn@wisconsin.gov, is named after Hall of Fame Milwaukee Braves pitcher Warren Spahn. It is not listed in public directories.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who was in office between 2011 and 2019, also used the pseudonym kevin.scott@wisconsin.gov to communicate via email, according to Walker's former chief legal counsel Katie Ignatowski.

The alternative email allowed Walker to use an inbox "that wasn't flooded with emails from constituents," though she noted constituent emails were handled by staff, and that Walker still saw such emails as needed.

Ignatowski said Walker's administration worked with attorneys in the state Department of Justice and felt there was a legal basis to protect Walker from being emailed directly, given there were other ways for constituents to contact the governor's office.

"If there were things he needed to see, it's not like he never saw them. It would just come through alternative channels," Ignatowski said. "There's lots of triage that happened."

The practice was discouraged by the Department of Justice under former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, according to former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Daniel Lennington, who now works for the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

Evers spokeswoman Britt Cudaback said in an email Monday that non-public-facing email addresses are a digital security practice used for more than a decade. Such threats include phishing, spam and other email correspondence that could monitor, disrupt or otherwise breach state information technology infrastructure.

Both Walker and Evers regularly provided public records from the alternate email addresses, according to Ignatowski and responses to past requests for records from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"In fact, in every instance in which our office has provided such responsive records, we have explicitly made requesters aware of these addresses, and the purpose of their redaction, in providing responsive records," Cudaback wrote.

Lennington told the Journal Sentinel the practice "definitely has happened in previous administrations."

However, he said it was not condoned or recommended by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and Office of Open Government, at least since he worked in the DOJ from 2012 to 2019.

"In fact, it's been explicitly discouraged," Lennington said.

Lennington said the "entire purpose" of using an alias email is to evade public scrutiny. If the idea is that there should be multiple email addresses for the governor because he needs one to avoid clutter, Lennington said, officials could easily create an additional email address using a name that makes it clear who the official is.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Josh Kaul did not respond to questions from the Journal Sentinel.

Rick Esenberg, president and chief counsel for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, said "the problem some are overlooking is that there is no need to use an alias unless you are trying to mask the sender or recipient of the e-mails."

"No matter who does it, that raises questions of whether an account was used for improper purposes," he said. "People asked that question about Walker. And they are now going to ask it about Evers."

Government watchdogs question email practice, but concerns differ

Bill Lueders, president of government transparency watchdog Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, questioned the Evers administration's justification for withholding the email address from public records.

"It strikes me as just nonsense," Lueders said. "There's a way in which digital security can be compromised for every email address. Basically, if that argument holds, then no email addresses of anyone should ever be made public."

Tom Kamenick, president and founder of Wisconsin Transparency Project, an open records watchdog group, didn't think the email's use was "inherently problematic" as long as public records were being shared properly.

Still, Kamenick questioned what he called a "fox in the henhouse" problem.

"It doesn't violate the open records law, but the real risk is that it creates the opportunity for abuse. If people make records requests for the governor's emails, how do you know if they're searching these secondary email accounts? You don't unless they admit they exist."

The alternative email reported by Wisconsin Right Now has been inactive "for years," according to the governor's office, and bounced a Monday morning inquiry from the Journal Sentinel.

It appears Evers continues to use a different non-public-facing email that is redacted on records sent from the governor's office, based on records response letters sent to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as recently as September.

Molly Beck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

THANK YOU: Subscribers' support makes this work possible. Help us share the knowledge by buying a gift subscription.

DOWNLOAD THE APP: Get the latest news, sports and more

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Evers' use of alternate email follows precedent set by past governors