Wisconsin records retention: the 7-year default and the schedule most municipalities never adopted.
Wisconsin writes retention law in two layers. The statute sets a hard floor: destruction happens only under a local ordinance, and almost nothing goes before 7 years. The Public Records Board then approves statewide schedules with shorter, series-by-series periods, but a local government gets those shorter periods only if it formally opted in. A municipality that never completed the adoption steps is still standing on the raw 7-year floor, whether it knows it or not.
- The default floor
- Destruction only under a local ordinance; the retention period may not be less than 7 years for cities, villages, and towns (Wis. Stat. 19.21(4)(b)), counties (19.21(5)(c)), and school districts (19.21(6)) unless the Public Records Board fixes a shorter period
- The utility exception
- 2 years for water stubs, receipts of current billings, and customer ledgers of a municipal utility (19.21(4)(b))
- The opt-in schedules
- Wisconsin Municipal Records Schedule approved 8/27/2018, revised 6/15/2020, expires 8/27/2028; County and School District general schedules approved 3/20/2023. Adoption = form PRB-002 to the State Archivist, PRB acknowledgment, then a local ordinance
- Historical Society notice
- At least 60 days written notice before destruction; the society may claim records of historical interest or waive notice (19.21(4)(a)). The schedules record the waivers series by series
- Meeting recordings
- Recordings made for minutes purposes: destroy no sooner than 90 days after the minutes are approved and published (19.21(7))
- The teeth
- Destroying a public record with intent to injure or defraud is a Class H felony (946.72(1)); destruction freezes apply while a records request or records lawsuit is pending (19.35(5))
The default: an ordinance, and almost nothing before 7 years
Wisconsin does not hand local governments a retention schedule by default. It hands them a floor. For a city, village, or town, the council or board may provide by ordinance for the destruction of obsolete public records (Wis. Stat. 19.21(4)(a)); without that ordinance there is no local destruction authority at all. And the ordinance itself is constrained: the retention period it prescribes may not be less than 2 years with respect to water stubs, receipts of current billings and customer’s ledgers of any municipal utility, and 7 years for other records unless a shorter period has been fixed by the Public Records Board under 16.61(3)(e) (19.21(4)(b)).
Counties get the same structure: destruction by ordinance, a 7-year minimum for everything not governed by a statute-specific period, and the same shorter-if-the-board-fixed-it exception (19.21(5)(c)). School districts too: obsolete records may be destroyed after not less than 7 years, unless the board has fixed a shorter period, and pupil records under 118.125 are excluded entirely (19.21(6)).
Read that floor honestly and the shape of the problem appears. Routine correspondence, duplicate copies, superseded working files: on the raw statute, all of it sits for 7 years. Nearly every shorter period a Wisconsin clerk has ever heard quoted, 2 years for this, 3 years for that, exists only through the Public Records Board. Which raises the question that most offices have never actually answered.
The schedules exist, but adoption is opt-in
The Public Records Board approves general records schedules that do the series-by-series work: the Wisconsin Municipal Records Schedule (WMRS) for cities, villages, and towns (approved August 27, 2018, revised June 15, 2020, expiring August 27, 2028), a County general schedule and a School District general schedule (both approved March 20, 2023). The WMRS runs seven sections, from administrative and election records through finance, public works, and revenue, each series carrying a title, description, retention period, confidentiality flag, and a Historical Society notification flag.
Here is the part Wisconsin does differently from Michigan: none of this applies to your office automatically. The WMRS instructions say it plainly: municipalities may adopt the schedule and are not required to. Adoption is a three-step paper trail. The municipality submits the Notification of General Schedules Adoption form, PRB-002, to the State Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Public Records Board acknowledges the notification by returning a signed copy. The municipality then enacts an ordinance adopting the WMRS as its official schedule.
A municipality that never completed those steps is not partially covered. It is on the raw statutory floor, and the WMRS says exactly what that means: non-adopters must still schedule destruction through ordinance under 19.21(4), and retention periods not specifically set by statute cannot be scheduled for less than 7 years without approval from the PRB. Every shorter period in the schedule is simply unavailable. So the honest question for every clerk reading this: has your board actually adopted the schedule, or are you assuming? If the acknowledged PRB-002 and the adopting ordinance are not in the file, the retention periods your office follows may not be the ones that legally apply to it.
The 60-day Historical Society rule, and where the waivers live
Wisconsin adds a workflow Michigan has no equivalent of. Before destruction, at least 60 days’ notice in writing of such destruction shall be given the historical society, which shall preserve any records it determines to be of historical interest, and which may, upon application, waive such notice (19.21(4)(a) for cities, villages, and towns; the county and school district provisions carry their own 60-day notice language in 19.21(5)(d) and 19.21(6)).
Taken alone, that reads like a letter to Madison before every shredder run. The schedules are where the rule becomes workable. Every WMRS series carries a WHS Notification flag: Waived means the Wisconsin Historical Society has determined the series has low historical value and waived the notice, so the municipality may destroy it once retention has run, no letter required. Notify means written notification to the society is required before destruction. N/A marks permanent series, which never become eligible at all. Most municipal series in the schedule are pre-waived; only the flagged minority need the 60-day letter. One caveat from the schedule instructions worth flagging: for records 75 years or older, the waived designation does not apply, and notice should be given regardless.
Notice the dependency, because it is the same one as before: the waivers live inside the schedule. An office that never adopted the WMRS has not just lost the shorter retention periods; it has no series-level waiver record to point to, and the 60-day statutory notice duty stands in full.
The freezes: requests, lawsuits, and the 90-day recording rule
A retention period that has run still is not the last word. Wisconsin layers three freezes on top:
- The pending-request freeze. No authority may destroy any record after receiving a request for it until after the request is granted or until at least 60 days after the date that the request is denied, and at least 90 days after denial if the requester is a committed or incarcerated person (19.35(5)). Wisconsin has no fixed statutory response deadline (the timing standard is covered in our guide to Wisconsin response times), but the destruction freeze is precise to the day.
- The litigation freeze. If the authority receives written notice that a mandamus action has been commenced under 19.37, the record may not be destroyed until the court’s order issues and the appeal deadline passes, or, if appealed, until the appellate court rules (19.35(5)). The Public Records Board cannot cut through either freeze: it may not authorize destruction of any record during the 19.35(5) period (16.61(4)(b)).
- The recording rule. A recording of a meeting made for the purpose of preparing minutes may be destroyed no sooner than 90 days after the minutes have been approved and published (19.21(7); the rule covers city, village, town, and school district governmental bodies). The clock runs from approval and publication of the minutes, not from the meeting date. The full mechanics are in our meeting recordings guide.
The schedule instructions fold the same discipline into practice: records past retention should not be destroyed while an audit is underway or planned, while a legal hold applies, or while a related open records request is unresolved.
Dekree runs this workflow for Michigan local governments today: every record filed against its retention series, holds applied automatically, and destruction eligibility computed with the paperwork generated. We are bringing the platform to Wisconsin next. To bring Dekree to your office, email contact@dekree.ai with the subject line Wisconsin and we will add your office to the Wisconsin rollout list.
The teeth, and who runs the system
The criminal provision deserves an honest reading. Wis. Stat. 946.72(1): whoever with intent to injure or defraud destroys, damages, removes or conceals any public record is guilty of a Class H felony. The intent element does real work here. The felony is aimed at deliberate tampering, not at a clerk who cleaned a storage room in good faith. The practical exposure for sloppy destruction runs through the civil side instead: destruction without ordinance authority under 19.21, destruction of a record frozen by a pending request or lawsuit under 19.35(5), and the findings and records-law consequences that follow when a requested record turns out to have been shredded. None of that requires a prosecutor to matter to a municipality.
The system behind the schedules is the Public Records Board, attached to the Department of Administration, whose members include the governor, the attorney general, the state auditor, the director of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the director of the legislative council staff, or their designees, alongside a small business representative, a representative of a school board or the governing body of a municipality, and one other member (15.105(4)). Its power over local records comes from 16.61(3)(e): the board may establish the minimum period of time for retention before destruction of any county, city, town, village, metropolitan sewerage district or school district record. That single clause is the hinge of everything above: it is why the 7-year floor bends only through the board, and why the board-approved schedules matter.
Two housekeeping facts close the loop. Board-approved schedules are effective for 10 years unless the board specifies otherwise (16.61(4)(c)), which is why the WMRS carries an expiration date of August 27, 2028: a built-in revision event every adopting municipality should expect. And the board posts its meeting schedule and agendas publicly at publicrecordsboard.wi.gov (it currently meets quarterly), so schedule changes arrive on a public calendar, not by surprise. For an office that has done the adoption paperwork, Wisconsin’s system is genuinely manageable: the series says how long, the WHS flag says whether the letter is needed, and the freezes say when to stop. The offices at risk are the ones running on inherited habits, applying schedule periods their board never adopted, on top of a 7-year floor nobody checked.
Common questions
Do we need permission to destroy records in Wisconsin?
Not a case-by-case sign-off, but the authority has to exist before anything is destroyed. For a city, village, or town, destruction of obsolete records happens under an ordinance (Wis. Stat. 19.21(4)(a)), and the retention period in that ordinance may not be shorter than 7 years (2 years for certain municipal utility billing records) unless the Public Records Board has fixed a shorter period under 16.61(3)(e), which in practice means an adopted schedule such as the WMRS. Separately, the Wisconsin Historical Society is entitled to at least 60 days written notice before destruction unless it has waived notice for that series, and the adopted schedules record those waivers series by series. If a records request is pending, or litigation notice has arrived under 19.37, destruction stops entirely (19.35(5)).
Has our town actually adopted the WMRS?
Do not assume. Adoption is a specific paper trail: the municipality submits the Notification of General Schedules Adoption form (PRB-002) to the State Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Public Records Board acknowledges it by returning a signed copy, and the municipality then enacts an ordinance adopting the WMRS as its official schedule. If your board cannot produce the acknowledged PRB-002 and the adopting ordinance, the schedule does not govern your records, and the WMRS instructions are explicit that non-adopters cannot schedule anything without a statute-specific retention period for less than 7 years without PRB approval. Check the ordinance book and the clerk files before relying on any WMRS retention period.
Can we keep records for less than 7 years?
Only through the Public Records Board. Wis. Stat. 19.21(4)(b) sets the ordinance floor at 7 years for city, village, and town records (2 years for water stubs, receipts of current billings, and customer ledgers of a municipal utility) unless a shorter period has been fixed by the board under 16.61(3)(e). Counties (19.21(5)(c)) and school districts (19.21(6)) carry the same 7-year floor with the same PRB exception. The board-approved general schedules are how that exception reaches ordinary offices: adopt the schedule, and its shorter series-level periods become available. Without adoption, 7 years is the minimum for essentially everything not set by another statute.
Is destroying a record early a felony?
The criminal statute is narrower than the fear. Wis. Stat. 946.72(1) provides that whoever with intent to injure or defraud destroys, damages, removes or conceals any public record is guilty of a Class H felony. The operative words are intent to injure or defraud: the felony targets deliberate record tampering, not a clean-out done in good faith. The realistic exposure for sloppy destruction is different but still serious: an unlawful destruction under 19.21, a destroyed record that was subject to a pending request or litigation hold under 19.35(5), and the records-law consequences that follow. The discipline that avoids both is the same: name the authority before anything reaches the shredder.
How long do we keep meeting recordings?
If the recording was made for the purpose of preparing minutes, a city, village, town, or school district governmental body may destroy it no sooner than 90 days after the minutes have been approved and published (Wis. Stat. 19.21(7)), notwithstanding any minimum period the Public Records Board has set. The clock does not start at the meeting; it starts when the minutes are approved and published. Recordings kept for other purposes are outside 19.21(7) and follow the normal retention rules.
This article is educational information for Wisconsin authorities and governmental bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: docs.legis.wisconsin.gov.