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Wis. Stat. § 19.82

This is the official text of Wis. Stat. § 19.82, part of Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Statutes — the complete compiled statutory law of Wisconsin, organized into numbered chapters by subject.

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Definitions.

Official statutory text

As used in this subchapter:

(1) “Governmental body” means a state or local agency, board, commission, committee, council, department or public body corporate and politic created by constitution, statute, ordinance, rule or order; a governmental or quasi-governmental corporation except for the Bradley center sports and entertainment corporation; a local exposition district under subch. II of ch. 229 ; a long-term care district under s. 46.2895 ; or a formally constituted subunit of any of the foregoing, but excludes any such body or committee or subunit of such body which is formed for or meeting for the purpose of collective bargaining under subch. I , IV , or V of ch. 111 .

(2) “Meeting” means the convening of members of a governmental body for the purpose of exercising the responsibilities, authority, power or duties delegated to or vested in the body. If one-half or more of the members of a governmental body are present, the meeting is rebuttably presumed to be for the purpose of exercising the responsibilities, authority, power or duties delegated to or vested in the body. The term does not include any social or chance gathering or conference which is not intended to avoid this subchapter, any gathering of the members of a town board for the purpose specified in s. 60.50 (6) , any gathering of the commissioners of a town sanitary district for the purpose specified in s. 60.77 (5) (k) , or any gathering of the members of a drainage board created under s. 88.16 , 1991 stats., or under s. 88.17 , for a purpose specified in s. 88.065 (5) (a) .

(3) “Open session” means a meeting which is held in a place reasonably accessible to members of the public and open to all citizens at all times. In the case of a state governmental body, it means a meeting which is held in a building and room thereof which enables access by persons with functional limitations, as defined in s. 101.13 (1) .

History: 1975 c. 426 ; 1977 c. 364 , 447 ; 1985 a. 26 , 29 , 332 ; 1987 a. 305 ; 1993 a. 215 , 263 , 456 , 491 ; 1995 a. 27 , 185 ; 1997 a. 79 ; 1999 a. 9 ; 2007 a. 20 , 96 ; 2009 a. 28 ; 2011 a. 10 .

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.