 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name's Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner. And as you know, every month we're pleased to bring a special guest to talk about the roles and responsibilities of their department. And today, very pleased to have Ryan O'Rourke with us. Welcome, Ryan. Thank you. Ryan is our family court commissioner. I believe this is your first TVA program. Is it not? It's been about a year now. A little over. So let's get right into it. Let's start by sharing a little bit about yourself, your background and when you became family court commissioner. Sure. I've lived in Wisconsin pretty much my whole life. I graduated from law school from UW Madison in about 2001 and went to work as an assistant district attorney. I worked here for Joe DeCecco for a number of years and then moved to Manitowoc and took a job with the county as assistant corporation counsel there. I spent about eight years there doing mostly child protection work and then I came back here and was hired as court commissioner when Rebecca Persick took the bench. We're both Madtown graduates a few years apart, but Badger fans, we're talking a little bit about that off the air. So as family court commissioner, set the stage a little bit. What are the roles and responsibilities? Sure. Our main role is to lighten the load on the circuit court judges. We deal with a lot of the daily grind to lessen their load, anything from family court to criminal court to ordinance and traffic tickets. And we also serve a role as the family court services office. So we provide mediation services and educational services for family court to help families in the middle of divorce and all the difficulties and transition that that requires. And I've said family court twice, though it's broader than that. It's court commissioner and some of our viewers might be wondering, well, what's the difference between a court commissioner versus a circuit court judge, federal court judge? I mean, how would you distinguish your role and compare to a circuit court judge? Sure. Well, a circuit court judge deals with law on the state level. They're generalists, so to speak, and that they deal with a very broad range of law as opposed to municipal judges will deal with very specific things, usually traffic and ordinance at the city level. Circuit court judges are tasked with everything from personal injury law to contract law to criminal law to family law. They have to be able to handle it all and they are really the heart of the judicial system. And that most people's experience, if they have an experience with a court, will be with the circuit court. And we are basically an arm of that court in that we help them process cases efficiently and judiciously and try and take some of the load off of the judges by doing some of the more, I don't want to say routine, because they're not all routine, but more common tasks that the legislature has been comfortable delegating to non-elected judicial offices like ours. Well, you follow a tremendous track record, as you know, because Terry Burke, who I used to work with when he was our court commissioner, starting 18 years ago, became the circuit court judge and recently retired. And then Rebecca Persick, who was court commissioner before you, recently was elected circuit court judge. So we have big aspirations for you, Ryan. I know that the circuit court judges really appreciate the role that you have and the important role that you and your staff do to support their work. Yet, of our 19 departments, you're one of the smallest. Touch on that a little bit. How many staff do you have? What's your annual budget? Give folks a little flavor for that. Sure. Our staff is three people, including myself. We have an assistant court commissioner and then one paralegal that she really serves a multi-dual role. She's an office manager, a receptionist, and an paralegal all rolled into one. I supervise both of them and then I answer to a combination of you and the circuit court judges. It's a pretty simple structure because we're not that big of an office. Our budget is mainly personnel expenses. We have some additional revenue that we take in from various court charges that we charge the public for certain services and then the rest of our budget is really taken up by the mediation program. The budget, I think, I'd be guessing here, the budget amount is in the annual report that can be found on the website. I know it's under $500,000. It's certainly less than that. I know your focus is less on the budget and more on the people that you're providing critical services to. As long as we're under budget, I'm happy. And so are we. That has been the track record. You just recently became court commissioner. You mentioned that you have your law degree. You've practiced. How does one become a court commissioner? What are the credentials you'll need, the skillset you need to become a court commissioner? Well, first you have to have the law degree. Normally court commissioners are lawyers who have been practicing law for at least, I would say, an extended period of time. I think the minimum requirement for this position was three years, but generally you'll see more experienced lawyers in that role. A lot of times there'll be lawyers who think the Circuit Court judges have a broad base of experience in different areas of law because you're going to have to handle different types of law. You can't really be a specialist. As such, a lot of times those court commissioners will either come from a general practitioner standpoint as a private attorney or they'll come from county attorneys because county attorneys tend to deal with the broader aspects of the law, the broader process, the broader process to the types of topics they touch on. And then I think you just have to have established a solid reputation with the judges you practice in front of for being prepared and knowing what you're talking about because ultimately they're usually the ones who decide who the court commissioner is going to be. That's for certain. As you share it though, there's a shared supervision between myself and the judges. I really defer that to the judges because things aren't going well. They make the change and fortunately you've just hit the ground running and I know they've really appreciated your role in the leadership and the good job you're doing. We appreciate that as well. Final question before I turn it over. It's been about a year. What have you found to be one of the more challenging or rewarding aspects of the job? It's hard to answer from a reward standpoint practicing as a trial attorney where you finish a case and you've either achieved the result that you think is right or a result that you think is wrong. Being a court commissioner is more about following the legal procedures being an umpire so to speak. You're not an advocate and you can't always necessarily reach the result that you think is best. Sometimes you're bound by the law and the evidence that's been presented and you simply have to reach the result that's right under the rules. What's most interesting I think I would phrase it rather than rewarding is for me personally the mental health cases are interesting child protection cases are interesting. The criminal law is interesting to me but it's interesting to me because that's my background. That's what I've practiced and initially that's what I had a passion for going into the law as far as difficult or challenging really for me it's the administrative end of it sometimes and finding time as to get out of the courtroom and actually run the office side of it and the economic side of it and finding the balance between those two when the focus is really on maintaining the court calendar and finding time to allow people to get into court on a timely basis so that their concerns can be dealt with. And I found the same thing with Judge Rebecca Pursek and Judge Terry Burke that just as you that was not their key area of interest or concern it was more being sure that you were doing a good job serving the public and rendering the best decisions that you could so appreciate it. Tom over to you. Thank you and you talked about some of this but what types of cases are you responsible for? Sure it runs there's a long list I'd start with small claims Commissioner Schabel Susan Schabel who's the assistant that I mentioned earlier she handles small claims from the first appearance through to the end trial I handle any number of things let's start with criminal cases we do initial appearances from the jail every day and hold bond hearings in family cases we handle paternity hearings we handle stipulated divorces from we do the final hearings on stipulated divorces where people are in agreement on the terms of the divorce we also do the initial temporary orders say for example while a divorce is pending someone needs a child support order or they can't agree on who's going to reside in the house or how they're going to handle visitation of the children we put in place those temporary orders while the divorce is pending we also handle traffic tickets the initial plea hearings that's every Wednesday I'm drawing a blank there's a number of other things we do I mentioned it early we handle mental health hearings the initial hearings at the hospitals potentially every morning we don't have them every morning but there's always a chance adult protective services cases where you're dealing with guardianships and protective placements for vulnerable adults or potentially vulnerable children as well we handle initial plea hearings for child and needed protection in services cases and juvenile delinquency cases we also do injunctions that's a significant portion of our caseload in situations where a person is seeking protection from another individual either because of harassment or domestic abuse we hold the we make the decision on the temporary restraining order to hold the final hearing for those injunctions there's a number of other minor things we do but I would say that takes up the majority of our time I neglected to mention we also authorized search warrants when the law enforcement in the district attorney's office are requesting a search warrant it's our office that reviews it and approves it or just or rejects it which means you're on call day or night 24-7 so it helped me with this so it sounds like there there are cases that you will start and see from start to finish and then there are cases you will start but you will hand it off to the judiciary is that fair to say? that is fair to say most of the cases we will do some of the initial hearings and then the circuit court judge will take over but the only things we handle from start to finish are the small claims and the injunctions and potentially the divorce and the parties are agreed upon are agreed to the result although I'll say this everything we do is subject to review by a circuit court judge so if a party is unhappy with the result they can request a new hearing from the judge that doesn't happen as often as you think but there is certainly that avenue if they disagree with the decision we make interesting so about how many cases do you handle sure and that's for the same reason you just brought up that's somewhat difficult question to answer because we handle parts of cases for the most part and again we have an annual report on the county's website where you could get the exact numbers I counted it up beforehand in the number of hearings that we held when you're not counting small claims in criminal cases is over a thousand but then you have to add in all the small claims hearings and all the traffic tickets that we do because we don't keep exact numbers on those and then we don't keep the exact number for the number of initial appearances and bail hearings that we do for people held in custody and we do that every day and it can range from one or two to 15 so I would say the number of hearings we hold is probably around two, three thousand but cases start to finish would be a different answer interesting what cases do you find the most routine and what do you think are the most interesting that you have to deal with well I didn't talk about these but we also do what are called supplemental hearings where the party already has a judgment against an individual and they haven't been able to collect that judgment so they can bring the person into court and collect their financial information to find out if there's a way to collect those are about as routine as it gets and I have to say that's not the most stimulating activity I've ever had but probably important to the person who is interested sure sure it's just our role and it doesn't that involve the most interesting would again be the mental health cases for me and the child protection cases because the reason I went into those and had a passion for them I went from criminal law to that because I found those more rewarding in the fact that you can actually achieve a real positive result potentially rather than trying to address something after it's already gone wrong in the criminal justice system with child protection and mental health you can try and get at the root of the problem more and solve the problem before it becomes a bigger issue and hopefully actually make a difference in the long term so it sounds like when you talk about a lot of these things it sounds like the whole office was created to make the system more efficient it would be my guess is that fair to say? Yeah I think that's fair to say the goal is to make the justice system run faster to get people who need to be in the court in a timely manner and to free up the judges so that they can focus on some of the more serious and complicated cases that they aren't dealing with the daily grind and much of the routine procedural stuff that's the same every time you don't really need a brilliant circuit court judge to handle you can dump it on the old commissioner I don't know if you mentioned it but I know you marry people by the time and where do you marry them and do you marry them at different sites or is it just all in one spot I'd be curious of that Normally it's at the courthouse a wedding in the court room we do them every Friday at 3 o'clock and we usually have about 4 or 5 time slots and people don't have to get married there they can request a judge or a circuit court commissioner marry them somewhere else normally those are the judges who travel and then the judicial official usually charges for that for their own time, for the travel and appearance we don't charge for my time if you do it at the courthouse we do charge well, we'll get to that but yeah, typically they're at the courthouse you charge, that's what I was going to ask is there a charge for getting married you kind of said there is and there isn't sure there's always the charge for getting the marriage license but that's handled by the county court so there's that expense and then if you get married at the courthouse there's a rental charge for the use of the courtroom for that time period and it's a flat $40 fee and it's a quarter hour time frame then usually the ceremony doesn't take that time so we let people mill around and take pictures and what not as long as they don't go up on the bench and then again if they're getting married offsite there's a potential charge for the actual judge's time to travel there and whatever I don't know exactly what the judge has typically charged it's got to be one of the most reasonable ways of getting married that exist my daughter's going to be married in 2018 and I'm thinking this might be a far more cost effective approach for us to consider well you mentioned Judge Burke earlier and he actually married me and my wife oh did he really? so you've been on the other side of the I have, not at the courtroom but he traveled for us well I've known people who got married in a situation going on and they might have an event even a church event or something like that but because of some unique situation people I've known they're going in the service or something like that they want an official and then they follow up six months later with another you do get a lot of that you get a wide gamut of how serious people take the ceremony as well the people who are just doing it to make it official and they're going to have the big event later on and then you have other people who this is this is the event for them so they go a little more all out to each his own right? you also mediate divorces as I understand it so talk about that a little bit? sure it's not just divorces we mediate any family law case I mean you could have parents of a child that were never married it could be a paternity action or something of that nature anytime there is or child placement or child custody the matter can be referred to mediation people can come in and request mediation on their own without a court order being involved as long as there is a court case in existence or judge may refer a case to mediation and the purpose of mediation is to try and help parties resolve the dispute in a way that's acceptable to both of them I always encourage people when I talk to them about mediation in the courtroom that they should really take it seriously and take advantage of it because it's really the last chance they have to have some control over the outcome otherwise the judge is going to be and the guardian of light are going to be making the decisions for you what happens is we have some professional counselors in the community who are on contract with us to serve as mediators we run the administration of the program and we take in the referrals and the requests and then we process it out and assign it to a mediator the mediator takes it from there meets with the parties tries to reach an agreement these are people who are trained and experienced in working out custody and placement disputes and then if an agreement's reached we get a legal document back that the judge reviews and either signs or rejects and if mediation's not successful we inform the judge and they can have their day in court at that point if you joined us late we're talking to court commissioner Ryan O'Rourke about the roles and responsibility of the court commissioner's office and it's a heavy topic whenever we do an interview like this particularly with someone in your role or working at health and human services or our sheriff's department individuals that are just working with people day in and day out and helping solve problems the weight of those issues and opportunities I find remarkable we all go about our lives with things that happen at home or with our own kids or family members or we know close friends that are dealing with challenging issues but every day to come to work and work on you know examples that you've just shared day in and day out case after case I can't tip my hat to you enough and people who do this kind of work so thank you first and foremost Ryan for your public service and the question I have is when you have the kind of weight and the roles and responsibilities that you've described how do you keep a good balance how do you not take that home with you at night and you know make sure that you're able to have a positive balance and focus that's a wonderful question I think you see a lot of people not necessarily my line of work now but what I used to do, struggle with that as prosecutors or child protection attorneys or what not you deal with a lot of day to day that's not very pretty and you don't see a lot of positive and it's over and over and over again it's starting to be recognized and you see educational sessions about secondary trauma and how to deal with it for me really it changed when I had my own kids and they were a conduit for me to get reconnected to the community in positive ways through whether it's their school or through their activities you start to see outside of work some of the more positive aspects and get those reinforced for you that you had going in but you kind of lost along the way and I think everybody deals with it in their own way there's healthy ways to deal with it on healthy ways and you got to find something that I think keeps you connected to the positive then I've often heard people say my kids help keep me grounded it's a different world when you walk into that door and get to spend time with your loved ones well that's great and again thank you for your service we don't serve in your capacity so only you know just how challenging it is but boy it's got to be challenging work the court system big picture what do you see as some of the or perhaps one or two of the key challenges facing the court system as a whole as you look into your crystal ball five, ten years from now I think the biggest thing past and going forward and this is a complaint I think you hear a lot not just from the court system but other forms of government on the levels below federal and state is on funded mandates I think there's a tendency at the state and federal level to pass laws that are on their surface great wonderful ideas and then not figure out a way to pay for them and that puts pressure then on the court system to try and find a way to accomplish this with the same amount of resources and then it tends to take away from other areas of focus or reduce the amount of attention you can give other issues and you just see that pressure continue and continue and continue and one of the examples of it that from my previous life that I know about and you read about in paper from time to time is that the pressure of district attorney's offices there's new laws, higher penalties new things to prosecute but no one wants to pay for the prosecutors and that's just one example but that's kind of the systemic court-wide issue I think that's the biggest one District Attorney Joe DeCecco is recently our guest and we had a wonderful conversation with him in his years of public service and I think he hit it right on the head and I'm sure that is one of the key fundamental challenges of the important work they do that the case law just keeps going up the demands on state laws that need to be implemented or followed go up and yet the resources aren't there to follow and that impacts service and frankly if you heard Ryan say it on funded mandates he citizens expect government at all levels to work together provide efficient effective services and we all expect that there's a reality that when one level of government and because counties are the right hand of the state level when one level of government has a demand or an expectation passes a law for a new program or service the law that has to be followed you know that's finding good but if the resources don't come along with it to implement that what happens is it falls on the shoulders of people like chairman Tom Wagner and the county board then to implement that and at the same time when you have demands from the citizen to hold the line on property taxes or reduce them it really creates a pickle so I think you hit the nail right on the head it's not only a challenge for the court system but for all of the programs and services we implement we only have a couple of minutes remaining and I wanted to end with a little bit of discussion I've heard you raise this before and your predecessors before that you know you're in a role I think you said earlier in an empire and being fair and rendering decisions and occasionally you have clients or people that come to the office or your department looking for advice looking for counsel and that's not your role talk about that a little bit please well we've tried to we actually revamped our window so to speak at our office to put some resources out as to give people handouts that they can if I need to do this what do I do I think there's a difference between legal advice and pointing people in the right direction as to how to start the process to accomplish a general task and it's a fine line to walk me personally because I'm the judicial official I try and avoid direct contact with the public about cases even if it's a general question because you have the various ethical restraints that you can't talk to people about their cases I can't talk to the father of the children about his concerns without the mother present that it's not ethical to taint the judicial official in advance of a hearing but that's our paralegal Dana does a wonderful job of screening those issues and trying to straddle the line between what is giving people advice on what they should do giving people information as to how they can go about trying to accomplish a hearing or get a court date or what type of paperwork they maybe need to start looking at to accomplish what they want to and it's a tricky line to walk so what would be your advice to any of our viewers someone that is currently interacting with your office or may in the future if they need a starting point if they need some information you say you have some brochures what have you do they contact your assistant and they can point them in the right direction how do you want that they can come and talk to Dana our courtroom is set up kind of weird you have to actually go through the courtroom to get to our offices but unless there's a cold hearing sign on the door you can walk right in and then through the door is a big window in the glass and you can talk to her you can also access various resources on the state court website I think it's wikourts.gov or some form of that address a general google search should allow you to find it or you can go to the court court's office that's a wonderful resource too again they have the same restrictions we do they can't give you advice but they have a lot of information that can help point people in the right direction wikourts office does a tremendous job billy largi and her staff are wonderful Ryan outstanding overview of important roles and responsibility of the court commissioner's office thank you so much for joining us today thank you and thank you for joining us today next month another very important department heads going to be here Tom eggabreck from our health and human services department and he's going to be talking about the roles and responsibilities now that department and the new drug court was established and will be funded as part of the proposed 2017 budget. So until then, thanks for joining us and we'll see you next month.