DARLINGTON (AP) — The Lafayette County Board has backed away from a plan to prosecute journalists over their reporting on a water quality study and to discipline elected officials for how they handle information about the research.

The Lafayette County Board on Nov. 12 put off a decision on how to release information about private wells contaminated with fecal matter.

The shelved resolution had said that journalists would be prosecuted if they didn’t quote a county news release verbatim when reporting on water quality. It had also threatened to punish officials who talked publicly without getting government permission.

The proposals drew criticism for violating First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.

The Journal Sentinel said county board Chairman Jack Sauer threatened to throw out critical members of the public at the meeting and accused attendees of being Democrats.

Prior to the meeting, the Lafayette County Land and Conservation Committee drafted a resolution that warned journalists against reporting on the well contamination study without running an official news release verbatim. Media law experts warned that the proposal was unconstitutional. However, the committee removed that from the resolution at their meeting early on Nov. 12. 

But the panel still approved one including a plan to “discipline” county board members and others if they talked about the study without permission from a panel of county officials.

“Do I think this is a flagrant breach of the First Amendment? Absolutely,” said Kriss Marion, a Lafayette County Board member who opposed the plan. “When you become a public official, you don’t suddenly become, you know, hamstrung as to what you can talk about.”

The Journal Sentinel reported that dozens of people attended Tuesday’s committee meeting, with some accusing members of trying to hide information from the public.

“I’m abashed to be living in this county with this kind of stuff going on,” Ginny Bean, of Argyle, said.

Federal and state researchers have been working on a joint study measuring contamination in private wells in Grant, Iowa and Lafayette counties. They released results in August that found 32 of 35 tested wells — or 91% — contained human or livestock fecal matter.

County officials were upset by news reports that they felt wrongly conveyed that 91% of all wells in the region were contaminated, Marion said. With another round of results soon, the resolution to restrict how they could be reported made its appearance last week, quickly drawing criticism.

The committee passed the rewritten resolution 5-2 on Tuesday morning. It forbids any “board member, committee member, county official or county employee” from making any public statement on the water study without approval of a “Review Board.” It warns that violators “may be subject to discipline.”

County Board Chairman Jack Sauer said discipline for board members could include removal from county committees. He didn’t specify what other punishments could be enacted.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said officials should drop the new resolution. He said it’s bad policy to require elected officials to get government approval before they speak.

“The whole reason we have independently elected public officials is so that we have the benefit of their perspective, not that they’re put in a chair somewhere and told to shut up,” he said.

Although county attorney Nathan Russell said the morning of Nov. 11 that the vote wouldn’t happen and the resolution wouldn’t be considered “in the near future” the resolution remained on the committee’s Tuesday agenda, just in the revised form. 

Russell told The Associated Press that he had just learned the meeting was still on and apologized for what he called “the confusion.”