Report says Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers used alternate email under name of Hall of Fame pitcher
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has used an alternate state email account under the name of a deceased Hall of Fame baseball player as a security measure, his spokesman said Monday.
Evers, a Democrat, used a taxpayer-funded email account called “warren.spahn@wisconsin.gov” to discuss public matters with senior Cabinet officials and others, the conservative newspaper Wisconsin Right Now first reported Sunday. Warren Spahn is a former Hall of Fame Milwaukee Braves pitcher.
Evers spokesperson Britt Cudaback said Monday that the use of the alias email addresses is common.
“As a matter of digital security, dignitaries in the State of Wisconsin have alias email addresses, including the Governor, the First Lady, and the Lieutenant Governor, as has been the case for at least the past decade, to my knowledge, including under former Governor Walker,” Cudaback said.
Bill Lueders, chairman of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said he was concerned about the use of what he called “phantom email addresses” and said he had never heard of the practice.
“I don’t know if they’re common or unusual,” Lueders said. “I do know that if they are used for public business, they are subject to the Archives Act.”
Responsive emails requested under state law are always released in accordance with state law, regardless of which account they are sent from, Cudaback said.
Open documents requests for responses from the Evers administration routinely include language stating that all identifying information for non-public email addresses is redacted.
“Making this information available would significantly impede the ability of these officers to communicate and operate efficiently,” the standard language says, including in a response to The Associated Press on September 16, 2022. “There is minimal harm to the public importance, as there are numerous public means to communicate with the Office of the Governor and the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, and only the address is redacted, not the other email content.”
Wisconsin Right Now reported that it was asking for all communications to and from “warren.spahn@wisconsin.gov” from 2018 through September 2023. The governor’s office rejected the request as too broad, saying in a response email of November 22 that more than 17,000 emails have been found.
The Department of Administration provided the outlet with more than 30 pages of emails containing messages between Evers, Cabinet secretaries and others.
In an email dated May 7, 2020, Evers told then-Secretary of Administration Joel Brennan that a box of highly toxic “mechanical solvent” ordered by someone in the state government had been accidentally delivered to the governor’s residence.
Evers wrote that he was “not sure what to do with it.”
Evers, 72, has spoken publicly about his love of Milwaukee baseball and Spahn in particular.
When Evers announced his plan to pay for the renovation of the Milwaukee Brewers stadium in February, he said in a statement: “I have been watching baseball in Milwaukee since the days of County Stadium, when I had the opportunity of a lifetime to Warren Spahn’s 300th game on display. -career game there a long time ago.”
Spahn was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973 after playing 21 seasons in the major leagues, including from 1953 to 1964 in Milwaukee. He was a 17-time All Star and died in 2003.