Cardinal Tweets

By Cindy Cardinal

“Tell me how you really feel.” That is what citizens in Owen and Withee should be saying to the Withee Village Board, especially those who serve on the O-W Police Committee. The three board members, which represent a quorum of the Village Board, sat mostly mute at the Police Committee meeting on September 3. There was a vote to hire a third officer and no one voted against it. On September 9, the Withee Village Board went into closed session, and it is clear to us that they discussed items in that closed session that they were not allowed to, e.g. police budget and the hiring of a third officer. They came into open session and voted to postpone a vote on both of these items, leaving people completely in the dark as to their reasoning, and throwing the process into chaos.

Closed sessions are allowed by the open meetings law in Wisconsin, but they are extremely limited in scope. Budget can never be talked about in closed session. Neither can creating a position. If they were talking about who they were going to hire to fill that position and what they were going to pay them, that would be a different story. Since they can’t be discussed in closed session, that is probably why they were on the agenda for discussion in open session.

It is also a grey area as to whether they could even discuss the wages and union contract for the current officer in closed session. The Police Committee had gone into closed at their meeting with the officer and the union rep. The wages and contract were negotiated at that time. All Withee had to do was approve what was agreed to. That could be done in open session and that is what Owen did. If Withee had been negotiating the contract, it could have been in closed. But they weren’t negotiating, just approving what was already agreed to in negotiations. I have a call in to the Office of Open Government to confirm my belief on this part of the issue.

Approving the union contract and Officer Haugstad’s wages was not even on the agenda, so even if it was possible to discuss it in closed session, why didn’t they vote on it? Do they just consider it part of the budget? And if they planned to discuss it, should the union rep not have been there?

I would also question the need to have the village clerk in a closed session about police. The city of Owen is the fiscal agent for the police department, so the Withee clerk really has nothing to do with it. The contract was negotiated by the committee and they should have been able to speak to any questions that the other two trustees had, in addition to the Chief of Police and Officer Haugstad being able to answer questions about the contract.

The problem here is that they are discussing in secret something that clearly should have been discussed in open. And the state has already given them additional funds to help pay for this type of thing.

I spoke to Karen Hurd about this specific part of Act 12. It came about because the city of Milwaukee came begging for a bailout saying they couldn’t afford to pay for police. The state sent auditors to look at their books. They had their own retirement system and were not part of Wisconsin State Retirement. They did a poor job of managing their system and spent money they didn’t get back on investments. Now they were threatening to defund the police and cut back on fire protection. The legislature allowed Milwaukee to add a 2 percent sales tax to their revenues, but that meant they couldn’t reduce police, fire or EMS services. Milwaukee felt if they couldn’t do it, no one else could either. This means that every municipality in the state now has to do a Maintenance of Effort form every year saying they haven’t reduced positions. They need to get their police and fire chiefs to sign it. The alternative for Milwaukee was that the state would dissolve the Milwaukee City Council and Milwaukee County Board. So supplemental revenue has now been given to every municipality to help them pay for things like police, fire, and public works. In our area, those are the only things the money can be used for. The money is tied to the state’s sales tax revenue. If a municipality doesn’t follow the rules, they will lose 15 percent of their total shared revenue, both regular and supplemental.

So it would seem like a no-brainer to add a third officer, when Owen-Withee has had three for most of the years that one department has served both communities. The average number of officers in Wisconsin and nationally comes out to about 3.5 officers per 1,500 people, which is just slightly more than the population of Owen and Withee. The state has given them money to help. Owen has chosen to split that money between the police department (hiring a third officer), paying their fire district assessment, and public works for 2025.

If Withee did the same, they should be able to pay most of their share of the additional police department cost, pay their fire district assessment, and make the payment on the new endloader that they purchased. This would seem like a fair three-way split.

I also spoke to Village President Everett Lindgren. He said they discussed funding in the closed session, that their budget is tight. He felt he couldn’t say much because it was in closed session, but was willing to admit that they did discuss the third officer position and how to pay for it. That could easily have been done in an open session and then we would all know what was discussed and wouldn’t have to guess. Although, given the fact that they came out of closed session and voted to postpone both the budget and the hiring of an officer with no discussion, it is clear what they discussed. And it wasn’t what was on the agenda.

It is my hope that our area municipalities will learn from this example of poor judgment and do as much work as possible in open view of their citizens and taxpayers. That is what good government does!