Late official honored for disclosing secrecy deal

The late Ald. John Sigwart, who disclosed the fact that Port Washington officials in 2024 signed a nondisclosure agreement as they negotiated with a microchip manufacturer and was later stripped of his committee assignments in retaliation, will be honored by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council as the state’s Whistleblower of the Year during a Thursday, March 19, event in Madison.

“Sigwart died in August (2025) at age 80, but his example of courage will live on,” the FOI Council said in announcing the award.

Sigwart’s decision to reveal the existence of the NDAs reverberated through the community and a year later, as officials began discussions about a data center on the city’s north side, led the city to vow that no officials would sign a nondisclosure agreement in the matter.

Sigwart, who served as a Port alderman from 2017 until 2025, is one of six people who will receive Openness in Government Awards by the council during national Sunshine Week, which was created to raise awareness of the public’s right to know.

Bill Lueders, president of the FOI Council, said Sigwart is “certainly a worthy recipient. He wouldn’t stay silent and he changed the course of events at some personal risk.”

Lueders said council members read of Sigwart’s actions in an Ozaukee Press editorial and Sigwart instantly stood out as a candidate for the award.

“We’re glad to shine some light on people who stood up for the right of their fellow citizens,” he said.

Sigwart didn’t just reveal that officials signed NDAs — something he said he did so he could learn about the development plans — he also talked about the fact that aldermen met with the developer’s representative two at a time so the city could skirt the Open Meetings Law.

An Ozaukee Press editorial regarding the issue stated, “Call it one more service in the long list of services by John Sigwart to his community.”

In a statement that will be read at the FOI Council event next week, Ozaukee Press Publisher Bill Schanen wrote of Sigwart’s openness, “The fallout was instant and long lasting.”

Not only did the developer drop the proposed project, Schanen wrote, the city’s mayor vowed all negotiations over the data center project that came afterward would be done in compliance with the Open Meetings and Open Records laws.

But, Schanen wrote, Sigwart faced retribution.

“His brave decision to thwart government secrecy earned him the respect of many in the community, but it also incurred the enmity of the mayor,” he wrote. “In an act of retribution, the mayor stripped Sigwart, the senior member of the Common Council, of all his committee assignments, and did it in a way contrived to be insulting — not with a meeting or a phone call but with a certified letter delivered to Sigwart at his home.”

While Sigwart’s actions kept information about the data center in the open, that isn’t the case in many communities. Officials in at least four communities in Wisconsin signed NDAs as they contemplated data center projects.

In response, two lawmakers proposed legislation that would bar the use of NDAs for data center projects.