 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne county administrator and co-host of this program with chairman Tom Wagner and Every month as you know, we strive to focus on a different department department head Programs and services going on in county government and today We're real pleased to have our court commissioner with us. Mr. Ryan O'Rourke welcome Ryan Thank you How long now has it been that you've been our court commissioner a little under three years now a little under three years So the honeymoon periods over I guess Ryan followed Rebecca Purseck now judge Rebecca Purseck Who was our court commissioner for a number of years and prior to that it was Terry Burke? So I've had the pleasure of working with some good ones and Ryan has continued Continued that stellar track record and without question It's never dull in the court commissioners area with everything that you You have to work with and the people that you address each and every day So set the stage for us a little bit, please. Tell us just a little bit about yourself and and the role of court commissioner but myself I went to law school in Madison and Went to work as a prosecutor shortly after that in Marathon County and here in Sheboygan for three years then I moved into Doing Government work for the counties specifically Manitowoc The focus on child protection work And then I came back here and shortly after returning here. They took on the role of court commissioner. So As far as what the court commissioner does our office is a supplemental office to the circuit courts. We take on a lot of the I don't want to call routine but Entry-level things that the circuit court would otherwise have to do to help the court system function more smoothly and process cases faster And to you they may feel routine, but I'm sure the people in front of you don't necessarily feel that way So what's the difference between a court commissioner and a circuit court judge? What type of cases are you handling and you know, how does that what's routine versus? What are the circuit court judges take on sure well? We're just we're an offshoot of the circuit court judges we By statute we're only authorized to handle certain types of hearings where the circuit court judges handle pretty much everything that Happens at the county level For example in family law cases divorces we handle the temporary orders at the beginning And we'll handle Divorces finalizing them if they're agreed upon and stipulated, but if there's a trial There's motions if there's discovery that's the circuit court's job and we're not authorized to do those things So we handle the same types of cases. It's just what Part or type of the case that they're in or stage that they're at as to whether or not we're authorized to handle that and here in Shabuigan the judges have pretty much Authorize us to do everything that's allowed under the statute for the most part So unlike Situation with a divorce and I think what the ads are or the percentages about 50% of people get divorced or they're abouts How many of these divorce cases are you handling or your office handling versus ultimately go on to a circuit court judge? I don't know that I could give you an accurate number if If the people need a temporary order we handle it right Not everybody needs a request a temporary order what that is is an order that Kind of sets the tone and the parameters of what's going to happen with the divorce is ongoing As far as some of the issues related to children finances things of that nature And if they agree upon all the issues then they have their divorce finalized in front of us But it's the home what those numbers are compared to how many divorce cases never cross our desk I'd have to know how many that I don't know that exact number. Yeah, no, that's fine. That's fine but you use the word earlier routine and From my point of view not being a court commissioner or a judge, but I can't imagine the challenge and the Just the experience that you have to draw from the demeanor you need to show when you're working with Couples that are going through a divorce children involved Have to imagine that can get pretty emotionally charged at times and be challenging to to work through Well, it can be you get you get used to it from a professional perspective and If anything is a challenge, it's setting the tone in the courtroom and making sure that Well, it may be difficult for people and emotional. It is a courtroom setting. They need to control themselves There's rules to be followed They may not always like what's going on, but they have to respect it and follow it. No, that's more. It's more of a challenge to Set the tone with that respect than it is for to process it personally At some point it's another case right treated seriously, but it's never personal as I think about My time getting to know a judge Rebecca Pursick both as family court commissioner now As a judge and you the last three years you both certainly have an even keel professional demeanor which which serves you well So with that said what does it take what qualifications does one need to be a court commissioner? well, you have to have a law degree first and then There's not a specific set of qualifications like there's for a judge I don't think there's any minimum age that you have to have practiced for a certain amount of time That might either be three or five years I don't remember exactly which one it is when I by the time I came into this job I was well past that so I don't know that I was paying that close of attention and you have to have earned The respect of the judges who make the decision as to who is going to be the court commissioner, so So the court commissioner's office is one of 19 departments and I suppose some of our viewers might think oh boy How big is this department just how big is the court commissioner's department? Three three three. It's one of our smallest probably along with veteran services and And I don't know who else it's certainly one of our smallest but with big responsibilities What's the the primary mission of the of the office then to assist the circuit courts? help cases process through the system faster and smoothly and I Don't want to say get people the results they want but at least get their cases heard in a fair and efficient manner And when you say three of you and it's my final question before I turn it over to the chairman What's the role of these three individuals? Obviously you what does each employee do? Sure, we have an assistant court commissioner Her main focus is on small claims cases And then she also serves a research role for the circuit court judges And as is a backup to me and some of the other types of cases when necessary and then we have a paralegal who Basically functions as our office manager Excellent. Thank you, Ryan. Tom. Thank you, Adam You talked a little bit about this I think with divorces and small claims. What are their kind of cases? Does your Commissioner's office handle. Sure. There's it's across the board We'll start with Mondays In the mornings, we're always doing Mental health hearings initial probable cost hearings for those for mental health commitments or Guardianships and protective placement hearings for adults and need of decision-makers or protective placement and then Every day we're doing bond hearings and initial appearances in criminal cases for people who are held in custody And let's see moving on to Tuesdays we routinely handle paternity hearings initial hearings on cases where Children are born and there's not a marriage or an acknowledgement of paternity at the time of the birth So the child support agency usually brings an action to establish who the father is and set orders and Rules in place for that and so we handle those We handle initial appearances on traffic forfeitures We do weddings We do the temporary orders and the divorces and the stipulated divorces like I've talked about I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of stuff. That's quite a bit. Yeah So it is so I understand it some cases you take from beginning to end and in other cases You take along the way and you may then stop at some point because of something you you may have known That's as far as you could go or Sure, we can handle cases from beginning to end for example You know, it depends it's not just the type of case, but it depends on what happens with the case Right, for example, we may have the first paternity hearing and everybody comes in fathers established. They agree to everything and For the next 18 years They never need to come back to court because they can work through things themselves other cases Even if everything's agreed upon two years from then things will have changed They'll need to come back to court may go to the circuit court and may come to us it depends so Typically we are in and out of cases. I would say is the best way to put it. Okay. Yeah It's about how many cases do you process it here? Well, the numbers are on the county's website in our annual report. I could Give you the numbers, but they're probably pretty dry. I would say it's in the thousands Once you add in all the initial appearance and bond hearings we do in criminal cases But not all those cases are start to finish. It's it's we have a hearing or two associated with the case Okay, I know you said, you know, you don't see cases as routine and it's certainly not this say the people involved are now routine But what do you find the most interesting or the most rewarding maybe? I'd say the most interesting are usually the mental health cases the most rewarding Now it's hard to call a case rewarding from a court official perspective because your job isn't to seek a reward or To feel vindicated or validated by your job is to take the facts apply the law And make the best decision It's not it's it's dissimilar to when you're working as an attorney and winning a case and producing the right result feels like a reward As a court official, you're supposed to be a little more detached. I don't know that I'd call any of them particularly rewarding the cases that I feel the most Pressure and I would say would be cases related to child child protection and looking out for what's best for for children that find themselves caught up in the system Well, we'll switch to something maybe a little more positive that maybe could be rewarding is when you marry people and You know, you do this at the courthouse or on site or exactly how does that occur? Well, if they're getting married by the court commissioner's office, we do it on site at the courtroom We usually do them Friday afternoon at 3 o'clock and they're fairly short weddings They're 15 minute time slots so we don't do elaborate ceremonies But yeah, if they want an off-site wedding, there's a list of court officials that I think they can get from the county clerk's office That will come out and do the wedding on on site if it's not at the courthouse And so is there a charge for getting married in in your courtroom? It's $40 to rent the courtroom for that 15 minute time period And I understand your department also mediates divorces, which obviously is the other end of that Please could you tell us a little bit about your mediation program? Sure. We have a mediation program. It's divorces or Anytime there's minor children involved in a legal relationship. In other words paternity actions You don't necessarily have a divorce because they may never have been married, but we'll still mediate those Anytime you have custody and physical placement disputes between parents of the children and sometimes even grandparents can get involved in that under the right circumstances They can get either court ordered to mediation or they can come in and apply for mediation and they will send them to a Mediator that we contract with we have five currently and they're professional counselors in the community We're probably one of the only counties that uses exclusively counselors a lot of places will use attorneys to And then the mediator will try and help them work through their issues and Reach a solution that works for both parties Meteor is not really there to decide what's right or wrong But just help the parties work through their issues if it's even possible to come to a compromise And then if they reach an agreement and the judge is willing to approve the agreement they have their new court order If they don't reach an agreement then they have to go through the court more formal court system and trying to resolve their disputes Thank you Follow-up question on the if they reach an agreement then the judge approves that are there ever any instances where a Couple will reach an agreement, but the judge Won't approve it Judges like to respect the wishes of the parties for the most part But yeah, I've seen a couple times where judges have rejected the agreement It can be something as as technical as that the language in the agreement doesn't match what's required under the law Or it could be that the judge really doesn't believe this agreement is what's in the best interest of the child That was too one-sided or something It's usually because the judge has some background information about one of the parents that might meet might create a situation Where they don't believe the child's in a safe environment. Yeah interesting typically they're they're approved So you went into the role of public service and I understand that your family is Very engaged in public service as well. Your wife was just elected a judge She was she was so if she's a judge and you're a court commissioner Does this further diminish your ability to have any say at home or how does that work? You know, she's going to have an investor What's funny that you asked that she's gonna have an investor to your ceremony soon Which is though official ceremony where she gets sworn in and puts on her robe And I'm probably gonna have to talk about that and I've been thinking about what I'm going to say and And the story I've been thinking about telling is I'm a Bit of a smart Alec sometimes and and after I started work as the court commissioner. It was weird to me Technically people don't have to do this But when you walk into the courtroom people stand right and they call you your honor So I'm gonna call you judge even though technically that's wrong too And I thought well, this is really weird, but when I got home, maybe I can use this so I walked into the room and My kids and my wife just kind of looked at me like, you know, you're supposed to stand when I walk Because by rights you do stand for Well, congratulations to you and your family I think it's incredibly honorable work and and I'll go back to the the question Tom posed to you You know as you said you you can't it's not about picking sides or hoping for one Ruling or another But obviously you wouldn't be doing this kind of work if you didn't take some satisfaction from it I mean what what drives you? What's what's motivated you to become a court commissioner? That's a good question. I can tell you what motivated me early on in my work as a prosecutor and To be a child protection attorney and that was to try and produce the right result in the courtroom as I saw as I saw it at least It's those jobs are rare in the fact that You don't have a client necessarily your job is to go into the courtroom and represent the interests of the public and try and produce The best result for for the public and not representing any individual interest and as a court commissioner, it's a similar role in that you're still a public servant and You still have a Tremendous amount of discretion To still try and produce a result That benefits not only the all the parties involved but is Beneficial to the community as a whole in the health of the community But you are somewhat constrained sometimes by by the law as to whether that Result necessarily fits with what the law allows you to do so There's a little more Trying to think of how to phrase this right There's a little more constraint not not that there isn't in those other positions either because you still have to follow the law You can't just run around do whatever you want You know what I forgot what you Got through all this well what what drives me what drives you what gives you satisfaction? I think Judge Persick put it best when she described the job is even if even if your decision isn't perfect often You're taking people's lives who are in chaos and at least providing them some order and structure into those lives So they can move forward That's a pretty good summary of What we do and What drives us to do what we do is you take disputes and and you try and resolve them according to the law and Hopefully that whether it's the result they wanted that gives them some peace of mind to move forward and know what What the structure is ahead of them that they have to deal with? I mean it's a profession definitely to be respected because there's so much Responsibility and as you said you're you're impacting lives and and often in a very significant way so as you think about the court system and your Experience with it both as a prosecutor and I was a court commissioner and looking forward Where do you see? That we have opportunities for improvement or that or there are challenges coming our way that we need to make sure we prepare for Opportunities for improvement are all around as far as clarifying laws and You know everybody has their own personal opinion is the way laws should be written or improved Personally, I think child protection laws could be improved greatly Mental health laws could be improved greatly, but I'm not a legislator. That's not really my job Is to take the law and apply it not to this you know write it or decide what it is So there's tremendous room for improvement, but that's not necessarily my My role not that the court system can't approve efficiency on its own As far as challenges in the future, I think that's again driven by the legislature There's always the challenge of New laws new mandates being placed upon the judicial system and the correctional system You know increasing mandatory minimums All these things that drive the workload up higher and higher and higher and those aren't always Funded or thought through how people are going to pay for right and the workload increases and increases and increases and then Sometimes the quality then decreases as a result because people can only do so much Right, I don't really feel that pressure in our office necessarily, but I've seen it in the Just under 20 years. I've worked in the criminal justice system for district attorney's office and child protection systems just being overloaded and And not properly staffed. Yeah, Joel Armanski as you know was go ahead. I was just gonna ask I Get it with the circuit court But in your situation if one of the parties doesn't Agree with your decision which can happen. Obviously, I would assume who do they appeal to or what is there? What is the situation in that regard? It would typically be the circuit court. They go to this court There's a process called the de novo hearing for most of the things we do that Yeah, make them just file a de novo request with the judge and the judge will hold a brand new hearing No, that's not everything and a lot of the stuff we do is is more procedural in nature than an actual evidentiary hearing But if it's an evidentiary hearing where we're making findings and issuing rulings Then yeah, the de novo hearing is the process. Okay going back to the challenges and And you know as you said, there's only so much time in the day and the caseloads have gone up and ideal Joe DeCecco was always Requesting additional resources from the state because our state prosecutors are all state funded so they rely on state resources and and Joe was good about beating the drum wasn't necessary very successful in garnering additional state resources nor have most counties and now we have Joe Lermansky who also has been beating that drum and Had some success or the state legislature had a bill where they were going to provide more prosecutors more funding for prosecutors ultimately that did not reach the governor's desk and And the county board stepped up and provided a part-time district attorney position Who has been very helpful in helping with foster children placement, but you know to your point of challenges I know that Joel just just this week shared with me that The turnover in the off office open positions growing caseload It's it's challenging. It's very challenging and of course that's going to have a trickle effect on the entire court system Is it not it? Well, and it's it's not just prosecutors. It's public defenders. It's the pay rate public defenders are provided for Private attorneys who take public defender cases. I think I read an article the other day that it's the lowest or second lowest in the nation It's social workers It's it's pressure on on everybody, you know and sometimes by investing in the system You can actually save money and and the county Prosecutors a perfect example because my understanding that is it's focused on Child protection cases and achieving permanence for those children and if you do that You move them out of the foster care system, which is a huge cost upon the county So by actually funding the resources necessary to move those cases through and get them done You're actually saving the money right very glad you brought that up because that was one of the critical points of why it was Passed by the county board and with a little long-term thinking that yes You're going to put some money up front, but in the long run. You'll be saving money and frankly pretty quickly And it's not and the benefits go beyond money to exactly when you human terms take all those children and get and give them some permanence to their lives While the outcomes aren't guaranteed the outcome is likely to be a lot more positive in those situations. Yeah, I know he's He's interested in seeing the county board do more invest more in this area And I think the board's going to be very empathetic to that though at the same time We have one-size-fits-all state-imposed levy caps and there are other needs whether it's mental illness or the opioid crisis or law Enforcement or staffing a detention center or whatever it may be but I was just reading this week, you know the article about the Winnebago facility the state facility which Appears to have some real challenges with staffing and level of care and And you know there's been a there's been so much emphasis at the state level about holding the line or reducing taxes But are we doing it to a point? Where we're not providing the care or we're not making the right investment so it ends up being more expensive Regardless transportation system is an excellent example the county board stepped here to appear to take care of our transportation system At the state level they continue to let it deteriorate and it's going to be a hack of a lot more expensive down the road to repair Well, I appreciate some of the insight that you've shared with our viewers today about the court commissioner's office Again, I appreciate the work that you do Ryan and your staff and you may be a small office But you have a big impact on the lives of people in this community and what days that that you generally have the weddings Is that Thursday or Friday Friday and the people that I see occasionally coming and going in the parking lot And the smiles on their faces and you know from from a to z you're involved in so many different things And we appreciate your work. Thank you. They are the happiest people. I see you going into the courthouse Yes Well, thank you Ryan or family court commissioner been with us now for about three years Ryan if anyone has further questions if they see this and want to ask a question about your department or I suppose going to the Website is a good opportunity to get in information as well, but any recommendation there I know you can't give legal advice obviously, but if people have questions about your department, what do they call? Well, we have a Mainline I couldn't tell you the phone number off the top of my head But it's on the website and the paralegal would answer that and she could give out any information Or if you contact our county clerk's office, they can always refer you to any of the 19 departments and make sure you get the information You need well again, Ryan. Thank you for joining us. Thank you And thank you for joining us We appreciate your time and hope you got a little insight about one of our 19 departments next month Jim to beast will be here our Director of Building Services and Jim has had his hands full. We recently built our new Transportation complex consolidating three facilities into one going to have an open house on June 15th So we encourage you to come out It's open to the public and Jim will be here next month to talk about not only the transportation complex But some other buildings and work that's being done in the county. So until then have a good summer We'll see you next month and hope to see you on June 15th. Thank you