 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And as you know, each month we try to bring to you another department and focus of county operations. And people sometimes don't appreciate just how large Sheboygan County Government is. It's really akin to a major operation or organization. We have the citizens of the community, which are essentially the shareholders. You have a county board that's your board of directors. 23 department heads that are your operational managers and about 1,250 employees. So all of that comprises a $150 million operational budget. And as you can imagine, you're going to have some legal issues that come up from time to time. So today we're very pleased to have Carl Busing, our county corporation counsel with us today. Carl, thanks for joining us. You're welcome. Carl, why don't you start, please begin by sharing a little bit about when you started working with the county and a little bit about your background. Okay. I'm a Sheboygan native. Went to high school in Sheboygan. Graduated from high school in 1970. Went to Northwestern University. You may be aware of Northwestern. That's the school that beat the University of Wisconsin in football a few days ago. I went to law school at the University of Wisconsin. School that lost the football game a couple of weeks ago in Northwestern. I then served as district attorney in a Northern Wisconsin county, Langlade county for six years and then returned to Sheboygan to practice law in private practice. I continued in private practice and am still in private practice. In the beginning of 2001, I joined a law firm which had the contract with Sheboygan County to provide legal services. And since Sheboygan County doesn't have an in-house corporation council, I assumed the duties in my law firm to fulfill the contract with the county for those legal services in 2001. And I've been doing that ever since. So most folks who follow our program operations, you're one of 23 departments and those departments are generally in-house. Department eds are hired in-house and Sheboygan County has somewhat of a unique relationship contracting for corporation council services. How long is that contract and how long has this relationship been in place? Well, Sheboygan County does have an unusual situation. It's something of a hybrid public-private partnership. The position of corporation council was created by the legislature in the mid-50s and it provided that you could spin off operations from the district attorney's office to provide separate civil legal services for the county as opposed to criminal prosecutions. And in the mid-50s, Alex Hopp was a part-time assistant district attorney in private practice and he was the first designated corporation council and his law firm shared him with the county, so to speak and that relationship has continued ever since. So it started out in the 50s. I've been on board since 2001 in this position. As currently constituted, the county board gives the corporation council a four-year term. However, they give my law firm a two-year contract so they can terminate me any time they want within the four years and at anniversary of the contract term they could decide they don't wanna continue with me, they might wanna go in-house or to another law firm or whatever their pleasure. And if Northwestern continues to beat Wisconsin, that may in fact happen. I expect to get some repercussions out of that. Absolutely. So please share your roles and responsibilities as a county corporation council. Okay, as corporation council my first and foremost duty is to provide legal representation to the county board of supervisors and the departments that comprise the county government. I attend every county board meeting and act as parliamentarian for the county board. I attend a variety of committee meetings of the constituent liaison committees for the county. I provide legal advice and counsel not only to the individual supervisors but overall to make sure that the county operations are in accord with state law, federal law, and best practices. The department heads call me on a routine basis to provide assistance or information on how to fulfill their functions in a lawful fashion. So I might get a question from the sheriff's department on serving garnishment papers on one day from the planning department on a snowmobile bridge question the next day and a healthcare center personnel issue on the next day. So it's a variety. The other principal thing I do is to draft all the ordinances and resolutions for the county board to enact. In that fashion, I keep a pretty good pulse on what the county initiatives are so that I can make sure that they're done in accord with the applicable and required laws. Now Carl, you're obviously our point person, the first person that will contact when we need assistance but one of the benefits of contracting with your firm is you have some people there with other skills and expertise and they can be your backup. Please touch on that a little bit. Okay, I spend about 75% of my time doing county corp council work. I have other private clients in my law firm which is Hop Newman Humkey if I can make a plug and other members of our law firm do backup services for me if I'm involved in something else or in many instances we have carved out particular areas of expertise and if a question comes up relating to those areas of expertise we go to those lawyers within the firm. For example, if it relates to real estate, something to do with the road system, transportation, register of deeds office, a lot of times we'll have Bill Powell get involved. We have Mary Lynn Donahue in our office who primarily handles the health and human service, delivery issues. She has an expertise in the public sector in that area. She also handles most of the in rem foreclosure actions on behalf of the county for those who don't pay their property taxes. And then finally we have Mike Bauer and Paul Durksey who assist in large measure with a lot of issues relating to zoning, subdivision law, developments, that kind of issue. Now some people watching this program today might be thinking, oh, this is a rather unique relationship and I can see the benefit in having someone like yourself and the people that you're surrounded with. But what about accountability? How is that different from a person in your position versus another department head? Well, I suppose in some respects it's the same and in some respects it's different. Just like any other department head, I have a liaison committee. In my case it's the Human Resources Committee of the County Board and I'm required to make monthly reports to the Human Resources Committee. They assess how I'm doing. They get reports back from other departments as to whether or not I'm responding to their inquiries and they have the ultimate opportunity every two years as I mentioned to recommend a discontinuation of my contract or non-renewal or to make another alternative. So I'm monitored on a monthly basis. I'm monitored on a biannual basis in that if they don't like the way I'm performing they can non-renew a contract. That's a little bit different than a department head who's an employee. You have to do some affirmative thing to discharge an employee. An employee is on board until someone says no. And in my case all they have to do is do nothing and in two years I'm out. So I think that provides a little more level of accountability than might otherwise be the case. And just to step back one moment before I turn it over to the chairman you mentioned some of the other attorneys that you work with. I don't know if you touched on the attorney in the child support area. Okay again in that this is sort of a hybrid operation the county has a responsibility as mandated by the state to provide child support enforcement services and also services to the mentally ill and the individual suffering from the disabilities of aging. And there is an in-house attorney. Her name is Natasha Tori Abate who is an employee of the county and she handles the direct responsibilities of the child support agency to assist in establishing and enforcing child support orders. And also she works with the Health and Human Service Department to provide court services for the populations we mentioned. And I oversee her operations that's something of an entry level position on her part although she's been there about two or three years and she's in a position now to be the expert and I'm the novice on some of these areas. But it works out very well that she can do the day to day operations and I can handle more of the administrative and oversight functions for that position. Very good, thank you Carl. Harold, we've heard a lot about unfunded mandates with levy caps and taper and whatever. Could you explain from a legal perspective what an unfunded mandate is as far as the county is concerned? Sure, we have obviously numerous levels of government the federal government, the state government, county government, city or municipal government and we're in a lower tiered area of government and as a consequence, other higher levels of government can pass laws that require us on our level of government to comply. So from time to time the state or the federal government says we are now going to require some new activity on the part of the county. And if they provide dollars along with the responsibility it's a funded mandate, but if they don't provide dollars then it's an unfunded mandate. And to give you a quick example, several years ago the state legislature said we are going to require that counties provide a certain level of services for crime victims and witnesses. You are going to have a waiting room for those people. You're going to have a contact person for those people. You're going to have them be notified any time there's a court hearing. Well, that requires some expenses on the part of the county government to provide those services. The state has partially funded some of those services but the county has to make up the difference. So it's an unfunded mandate to the extent that the state hasn't given us dollar for dollar what they require us to provide in services. Okay, on top of these unfunded mandates the state legislature has seen fit to at least for the next two years given us a levy limit. Could you explain levy limits and how they impact us? That's a fun one. This is something new that we really haven't seen before at least in this state at this level. The legislature has essentially said that the county supervisors no longer have the ability to raise taxes beyond a certain level. They have put a ceiling on the amount that the county board can raise property taxes. The ceiling is the equivalent of new construction for the county over the previous year. This year I think it comes out to a little over 3%. So the county board is maxed out on their ability to raise taxes beyond 3% of the previous year's levy. So if you're talking 40 some million dollars of levy last year and you can add 3% to it that raises $1.5, $1.6 million in income. Now of course the problem as you know as chair of the county board is that if we do nothing if we don't add any services just to fulfill the union contracts with the county employees and the health insurance benefits and everything else we're probably $3 million already. So the levy limits require the county board to get that much sharper pencils to make cuts or to get more creative to find revenue sources other than property taxes. Now you say well what happens if you exceed the levy limit? Well the answer is that if you exceed the levy limit on the taxing end the state will reduce the amount of aides they give to the county in the form of shared revenues on the bottom end. So you don't benefit by raising taxes beyond the levy limit and you're still stuck with the problem of raising enough money to maintain the operational level of government. So it's a struggle for you right now. If because of all the pressures of wages, health insurance, other things like that demands for services the county board really felt they couldn't live within the levy limit. Is there an alternative? Is there something we can do to go above the levy limit and not be penalized? There is a mechanism whereby the county board can request of the voters of the county permission to exceed the levy limit and that can be put on the ballot as a binding referendum. Now the problem is the timing of such a binding referendum. This 3% number, the new construction number that gives you the basis upon which you know what your authority is, you get that number in August 15th from the state. So you have to cobble together a budget between August 15th and November 15th when the legislature requires that your budget be presented to Madison. And between that time you have to figure out if you need to exceed the levy limit or not. And if you need to, you only have two opportunities to get the referendum in the September primary and that's really too early into the game or the November of general election. But if you do that and the electorate says no, then you've got to scramble from the Wednesday after the Tuesday election to the 15th to reformulate your budget. And that is gonna be an extraordinarily difficult thing to do if it comes to the point where the county board decides it really needs to ask the electorate to raise taxes to that level. Just seems to get more complicated every year, doesn't it? Well, absolutely. That's part of the challenges that we're all facing. Carl, I see you working hard every day attending committee meetings, county board meetings, et cetera. Are there other things that you're doing for the county behind the scenes that we might not see quite as obviously? Obviously one of the things that we need to do is look at the finances of the county. So to that extent I do collection actions on behalf of the county. As I say, Mary Lynn in our office does a lot of collections. We do the tax foreclosure stuff to make sure that we do gather the property taxes. And then there's just general advice. As I said, that might be the sheriff's department calling about some issue, but every day there's some new activity on the part of one of the departments or another that require my assistance. Just yesterday I drafted a lease for a hanger out of the county airport. I'm working on some required ordinances, another unfunded mandate if you will from Madison that we need to put into place some regulations on soil erosion. Something like that requires me to sit and figure out how to put it into our county code, what the proper language is and so forth. So there's always something going on. What do you think are biggest challenges over the next couple of years that we'll have to deal with as a county board? Well as you know the issue of the nursing homes is facing the county board over the next couple of years. The continuing deficits that the nursing home operations and particularly the non-required nursing home operations, how that's driving our budget decisions is going to be the challenge for the county board. We have our nursing home deficits rising much faster than any other costs in county government and none of the costs of county government can be handled strictly by the increased tax revenue available under the cap under any circumstances. But it's just that much more difficult to try to provide this level of services for the nursing homes. And you in the policy making seats are gonna have to earn your pay to figure out how to best juggle these needs. From my perspective, I'm a policy neutral person. The supervisors and the department heads come to me to draft the documents to make the decisions work if possible. But the real responsibility to make the tough decisions is on the shoulders of the county supervisors and how you're gonna be able to reconcile the appropriate level of nursing home care for this community through county owned and operated nursing homes is gonna be the real challenge. So right now what are we the, we got more beds than any other county operation in the state and with the amount of deficits we're running that comes out to like 10,000 bucks a bed that we're subsidizing per year our nursing home residents. And at some point they're gonna have to be some hard choices made and I get to sit back and do the legal work to make the choices function properly. Okay, thank you, Carl. Earlier, Carl, you mentioned that one of your responsibilities is to prepare resolutions and ordinances and I have a sneaking suspicion that viewers may be wondering, well, what's the difference between a resolution and an ordinance? It's not something you commonly refer to when you're talking to a friend or neighbor. Could you explain that please? Well, generally speaking, if you want to set a procedure into place or you want to have an ongoing method of operations, you put it in the form of a county ordinance. If it's a one-shot type of activity that would be in the form of a resolution. For example, this month we are granting an easement to a private individual to cross over some county land. That's a one-shot type of operation and that's going to be passed presumably by the county board in a resolution. By the same token, if we have a soil erosion ordinance, it will be part of our code of ordinances and it will be a reference point to the planning department or the land and water conservation department for enforcement purposes. This is a new law applicable to all of the citizens of the county. We also have circumstances where the ordinances help us internally to administer the county. We have an ordinance that says office hours in the courthouse are from eight till five. And that'll be our operations until such time as somebody says we want to make a change to that, the county board will pass different hours. So if a constituent goes to a county board supervisor or a county board supervisor wants to make a change, make some type of change or some type of policy decision, send a message to the state level from a standpoint of taking a position county-wide. They would either do so through, in that case, a resolution or if they pass a law and ordinance, but how does that process begin to unfold? How does someone get that legislation to the county board? Well, any individual constituent can ask their supervisor for their district or any supervisor of the 34 supervisors to sponsor or to present something. Routinely, the committees of the county board, the liaison committees know the specific area that they oversee and they're in the best position to sponsor legislation on a committee level, but any individual supervisor has the right and opportunity to say, hey, I would like to have an ordinance drafted and presented to the county board on such and such a topic or I would like resolution drafted in support of something on the state level or in support of some local activity or in support of some local program. My responsibility then is to draft it in a form that meets the requirements of state and federal law and is easily readable. Sometimes I get challenges that they say I write like a lawyer, but I guess that's what you pay for, but it's my responsibility to put it in the proper format for the individual supervisor. I don't get a choice of saying, boy, that's a dumb idea. I might privately suggest it to a supervisor that maybe they wanna think it through a little bit more, but if they wanna do something, it's my responsibility to put it in the proper format for them to present to the county board on the county board floor. Very good. Well, Carl, we certainly appreciate your time today and the work that you and your firm does for Sheboygan County. And as you said, it's been a longstanding relationship back to the 50s and there's no lack of work to do or challenges to overcome. So we appreciate you being our guest here today. My pleasure, thank you. Carl just laid out a roadmap, if you will, for how you get a resolution or ordinance prepared and a constituent can contact their county board supervisor, the county board supervisor, bring it in, go to their liaison committee, and it works its way to the full county board. And it's very similar to our county budget process where county board supervisors can individually focus on a particular program or service and encourage that more resources go there or less can suggest a new program be created or a program be reduced. And that's really what we're in the middle of right now is the development of our budget. And as some of you perhaps have seen in the newspaper, the county board is positioned to come in at about a 3.3% increase in the property tax levy. That's the lowest levy increase in a decade and in part was driven because of the state mandate or CAP that Carl shared with us. That's gonna mean some tough decisions and when the board takes that up in the weeks ahead, there will be reductions in some programs and services to work within that levy restraint. And also, as Carl pointed out, the health care centers continues to be one of the driving challenges of why our budget has had the pressure that it has. So please get involved if you have suggestions, concerns, questions, don't hesitate to contact any of us. You're a county board supervisor that represents you or certainly one of our department heads or their staff because we need that input. And one thing we certainly need more of in county government is creative thinking and problem solving. So we appreciate your time today. Next month, you're gonna hear from another very effective department head, Ann Wundergem, who's the director of our Health and Human Services Department, the largest department in county government with a vast number of important programs and services. So until then, on behalf of chairman, Bill Gearing and the county board, thank you for joining us.