The Edward Jackamonis Papers are a large collection of legislative papers which document his involvement with a host of important political issues and with the internal administration of the Assembly. There are no personal papers in the collection, nor is there any information on his career as an instructor of political science at UW-Waukesha or as an agency administrator with the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority. There are only scattered references to his election campaigns.
Although the collection is primarily concerned with Jackamonis' public legislative record, there are numerous notes and memoranda exchanged with members of his staff which provide glimpses of legislative decision-making not offered in the papers of many contemporary legislators.
The collection is organized as subject files, speaker's agency files, correspondence, legislative bill files, and microfilmed biographical scrapbooks.
The SUBJECT FILES originally consisted of two groups of files: paper folders for small groups of documentation and three-ring binders for larger accumulations. After rigorous weeding to remove secondary material more accessible elsewhere and archival documentation more appropriately saved in the records of the creating agency, this size distinction was less apparent, and the two groups were combined into one alphabetical file. The resulting series includes a wide range of documentation on most of the prominent political issues of the period which Jackamonis served in the legislature. Well documented are such issues as state and federal budgets, Wisconsin economic development, taxation, and public employee labor issues. Because of Jackamonis' increasing role as spokesman for the opposition after 1979, references to Lee S. Dreyfus are frequent in the documentation from this period. Jackamonis served on numerous standing committees of the Assembly and special study committees of the Legislative Council; those on regulation of cable television, legislative oversight of executive agencies, lobbying, and occupational licensing are especially well represented. There are also numerous files dealing with management improvements introduced in the Assembly during his tenure and his administration of that body's committee structure. Material on other issues with which Jackamonis was particularly involved include airport regulation, court administration and judicial salaries, and the McMiller Shooting Range. There are also numerous references to issues of local concern in Waukesha and Waukesha County. Also located here are genre categories for Jackamonis' press releases and newsletters.
SPEAKER'S AGENCY FILES, 1978-1982, was a special correspondence series created after Jackamonis was elected to that post. The file contains his exchanges with top administrators of state executive agencies and with Governor Dreyfus. The files are arranged alphabetically by agency name, with those on the Department of Administration, in which Jackamonis had an ongoing interest, and the Legislative Reference Bureau being most extensive.
GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE contains incoming and outgoing letters from constituents and others concerning legislation, issues, and various problems. The correspondence is arranged chronologically by year and by month. Also included are six boxes of alphabetical cards which index communications by correspondent name, together with a summary of each communication. The cards are filed into district and out-of-district categories within several time periods. Unfortunately there are no subject indexes or internal cross references to material filed in other portions of the collection.
LEGISLATIVE BILL FILES contain information distributed by constituents, lobbyists, advocacy groups, state agencies, and others in order to influence voting on specific legislation. These are filed chronologically by session and then by legislative branch. The collection includes files only for the 1977/1978 through the 1981/1982 sessions, although a few files from his first term in the Legislature were extracted from the General Correspondence.
The papers also contain an extensive collection of microfilmed BIOGRAPHICAL SCRAPBOOKS. Because the clippings were to be returned to the donor after filming no effort was made to eliminate duplication or correct the arrangement. Breaks in the chronlogical order are especially evident within the 1977 scrapbooks.
