2/20/2026

PRESQUE ISLE - After a Jan. 30 ultimatum from Vilas County DA Karl Hayes, Presque Isle finally gave The Lakeland Times the year-old public records on the town’s multi-year investigation into potential misuse of its own computers, which prompted the open records request. Despite months of delay and advice from attorney Steven Garbowicz that the records were public, Town Chairman Allen Eschenbauch only provided the files via USB on Jan. 27. Eschenbauch claimed a spring 2024 email migration caused the “permanent loss” of all prior emails and data from two of three computers. The request involved the multi-year computer misuse probe, which the board ended in Jan. 2025, even though a Special Investigations & Forensic Technologies forensics review recovered just under 39,000 deleted files and advised the investigation “needs to continue.”