 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Vanderstien. And today we're very pleased to have our Corporation Council with us, Mr. Carl Bison. Carl, welcome. Welcome. Thank you. It's good to have you here. Carl is one of 22 very important department heads working for Sheboygan County with a $130 million budget, 22 departments, about 206 programs, and nearly 1,000 employees. As you can imagine, legal issues come up from time to time. And Carl is certainly in the midst of it in one of our key advisors, so it's good to have you here. Thank you. I appreciate it. Why don't you start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and when you became Corporation Council for Sheboygan County. Okay. I'm Sheboygan native, graduated from North High School in 1970. And I went to college and law school. After law school, I was in private practice for many years. I continued to be in private practice. My law firm has the contract with Sheboygan County to provide the civil legal services to the county. I've been the designated Corporation Council, the lead person, if you will, from our law firm since the year 2000. And when people hear Corporation Council, some of them might be wondering, well, what is that? You just shed a little light on that being an attorney, but what are the roles and functions of the Corporation Council? The Corporation Council acts as the civil legal council for the county. If you consider county government to be like a corporation or a large business, I would be the attorney that does all the legal advice for the county. Now the county has among its functions law enforcement and prosecution of crime, that's done by the district attorney. But if there's legal advice to be given to department heads, to you as county administrator or the county board, you look to me for that legal advice. And we look to you frequently. What's the name of your firm? What is its structure, and how did this relationship come to be over time with your law firm? I'm a member of the Hop Newman-Humpkey law firm in Sheboygan. We have about 10 members. The lead name in our firm is Hop, as in Alex Hop. Alex Hop, as a young attorney in the early 50s, was an assistant district attorney on a part-time basis, and also part of a law firm. As assistant district attorney, he was delegated the civil responsibilities for the county back then. Later on in the late 1950s, the district attorney's office separated out its functions from the Corporation Council functions, or the civil stuff. Alex continued to do the civil stuff, and the district attorney's office continued to do criminal prosecutions. Historically, our law firm has held the contract up until the present time, when I continue to do it on behalf of the law firm, to serve the county as my biggest client. And that's not necessarily the norm. If you look at the 72 counties across the state, I think most have Corporation Council on staff as part of the county table of organization. Sheboygan County's had a long and successful track record with your firm, with the outside contracted Corporation Council services. As you think about it, based on your experience, or the experience of your predecessors, what's some of the positives of having this contracted relationship? Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, you're right. There's only about a half a dozen counties that still have an outside law firm act as Corporation Council, and we're by far the largest. Where we think that both the county has benefited and the public has benefited is that by having a nine or 10 person law firm handling matters for the county, we can bring levels of expertise to various issues that an in-house Corporation Council might not have. So if I've got an issue dealing with an open records question, I can rely upon myself, but I can also rely upon Mike Bauer or Mary Lynn Donahue from our firm, who also do municipal law. If there's a real estate question, I can refer to one of the real estate lawyers. If there's a probate question, I can refer to Phil Miller, who does probate in the state planning. Regular in-house Corporation Council might not have the wherewithal to respond to those kind of specialized issues that come forward from time to time. And if they don't, then they too would probably have to go outside and seek legal assistance. Right. Carl, as you think about your role and responsibilities there, and you just described the contracted situation being a little unique, some of our viewers might be thinking, well what about accountability? If we're contracting with you, who are you accountable to? How is that built into the relationship? Well in a couple of different ways. First of all, I have a contract which has a term ending of four years. It has to be reviewed over the course of four years, and if I have an unhappy client, I can be non-renewed. Furthermore, you can fire me at any time under the terms of the contract. You might say, gee, you didn't negotiate a very good contract for yourself, Carl, but I think it's in the best interest of the public to have the ability to make quick changes if it's determined to be necessary. So I'm accountable to you as the county administrator, to you, Mike, and your county board. If I don't do the job, you can non-renew me. My contract comes up at the end of December of 2010. If the county decides that it isn't a good working relationship, they can make the change then or even before then if something comes up. On a day-to-day basis, I'm accountable to the Human Resources Committee of the county board. They're my oversight committee, and I have to give periodic reports to that committee as to what my activities are. And of course, as a department head, you interact with all the department heads, and if I'm not providing services to other department heads, you hear about it. If I'm not providing adequate assistance or advice to other county supervisors, you as county board chairperson hear about it, and if that happens, I end up hearing about it too. You did a nice job providing an overview to wrap my segment up before turning it over to Mike. You mentioned all these other department heads that you interact with and have to provide assistance to. Please give our viewers a flavor for the issues, kind of a menu of issues that you routinely work on or your firm works on. Well every day it's a little bit different. I could be dealing with a probate court issue. People are not turning in their annual guardianship reports, so I as corporation counsel have to chase down these people to make sure they turn in their reports. The county has an airport, the airport has hanger leases, I have to draft and redraft and renew and change leases as appropriate. The county has a zoning department, the zoning department does land use things. I spend quite a bit of time giving advice to the zoning department when they have issues. The day to day activities of the county board requires me to be involved in open records issues, open meeting issues, so there's never a shortage of issues that come up. On Friday I spent about an hour and a half giving advice to the clerk of court's office about a writ of eviction which they issued and then after the fact they decided they weren't sure they should have issued it. So I had to do a significant amount of research into the area of rits of execution. I had to consult with the clerk of court's office, I had to consult with the court that did the underlying eviction, I had to consult with the sheriff's department. We decided that the writ was improperly issued. Now I found out that the facts upon which the clerk originally gave me to analyze were incorrect. I have to rethink the whole thing so that's probably another hour and a half today. So there's always an issue and I don't know what it's going to be tomorrow. That's always something different. And it always makes it interesting. Well done. Thank you, Carl. Well going on to something different, Carl, from time to time people have been hearing about unfunded mandates and their negative impacts on governments like our county. From a legal perspective, can you tell us a little bit about what unfunded mandates are and how they affect our county? The term unfunded mandate refers to the fact that county units of government are charged to do certain things. We are required to do so either by the state government or by the federal government. And when the state or the federal government requires us to do something, we have to either get money from them to do it or we have to put it on the backs of the taxpayers. When we're obligated to do something by no choice of our own and the federal or state government doesn't provide us with the resources to do it, it's an unfunded mandate. We have to come up with the money and the ordinary choice would be charging it on the property tax rolls. And that's the frustrating thing, of course, for the elected county supervisors because they're being asked to do things that they have no choice over, but they have to pass the tax burden on to the taxpayers who are wondering how come the taxes keep going up. That's great. Carl, one of the other new factors that we've been having to live with in county government are levy limits. Could you please describe what levy limits are and how those affect the county board? At the same time that certain burdens or responsibilities are being dropped upon the county government by the state, the state has decided that county supervisors are not going to be given the leeway to figure out how to pay for these things and are not given the free rein to raise taxes if that's the only choice they've got. So the legislature has essentially capped the ability of county boards to raise taxes on a local level. And I think what is it now? Three percent. Three percent at them under the current budget. So the county board is trapped in a situation where they may be required to do some service. And that service may cost county government four or five percent of its current budget, but if the county can't afford to do it, they can't raise taxes to match the obligation put on them. And so the result is that something else gets cut. So it's a real struggle that you've got to go through every day on the county board level. And it's a real struggle for all of us in county government to try to make things work under those circumstances. Thanks for that information. Shifting gears a little bit, Carl. I know that your office plays a big role in child support and mental commitments. Could you explain what you do on behalf of the county in those areas? Sure. We have an unusual situation with our contract. A couple of the responsibilities of county government are to provide for services to the most vulnerable in our community, whether it's seniors suffering from the infirmities of aging, mentally handicapped, mentally disturbed persons, those people who need services and under circumstances where those people need services ordered by the courts, it's the job of the corporation council to provide the legal services necessary to get the courts to assign a guardianship or a mental commitment. The corporation council is responsible for those duties. We have in our structure an in-house attorney, attorney Natasha Torrey Morgan, who handles all those mental commitments and guardianship commitments on behalf of the county health and human services department. She's full time, works for the county but reports to me under kind of the interesting relationship we have. At the same time there is a similar arrangement with the child support agency. Again counties have been mandated by the state and federal governments to provide services for establishing paternity, for establishing and enforcing child support obligations and Natasha handles those duties on behalf of the county as well. We've talked a little bit about some of the day-to-day activities that you go through Carl. But are there any special projects that you work on for the county that just don't come up that often? A few, yes. We've been very busy on the county level for the past several years. First and foremost as far as size and an ongoing project, we had the $25 million non-motorized transportation initiative that our county was fortunate enough to receive. However, as you can imagine there's an extraordinary amount of legal work to review contracts to set up the protocols for getting citizen input to make the arrangements to spend that amount of money. We've got initiatives ongoing including the Morgan aircraft venture. They are potentially going to be locating their operations at the Sheboygan County Airport. We are working to have a lease arrangement with them for a long-term lease at the airport that has the potential for an incredible amount of economic good news for this community. We're currently involved in discussions and negotiations for the sale of Sunny Ridge North. That's a surplus piece of property that the county has. Developers have approached the county to make that into a project that can get back on to our tax rules and to provide for employment for those in our community. So there are a variety of issues that are coming up on a special project basis as opposed to day-to-day governmental activities that I'm involved in. If I may interject on the Sunny Ridge North project, because a number of our viewers may not be aware of this. It has been discussed at county board meetings and other committee meetings, but as Carl is well aware, since he did an enormous amount of legal work on that, we sold Sunny Ridge in May of 07, but still retained the north building and grounds. And now we have an opportunity to sell the north building grounds, which will be turned into senior living apartments. The north building will be 42 senior living apartments, some condos to the north of that yet and then some duplexes and back, but then in front some businesses that will be complimentary to the nursing home itself and that type of development. So it's real exciting for us involved with this project because it'll provide some further budget relief to the county board, allowing us to move those resources to other areas as well as inject some additional development and opportunities in that area. So I appreciate the work you've been doing on that, Carl. We're hoping to wrap up that final piece of the sale later this year with a closing sometime in the spring of 2010. I want to just mention on that, just so your viewers are not misled, as part of that project, the county is not in any way, shape or form selling Taylor Park. That's a separate set aside. County is really working to reinvigorate that park. I understand the Sheboygan Downtown Rotary Club is coming forward to be a partner to help revitalize and improve that area to make it more user friendly to the community. So that again is just another piece of the efforts on the part of the county board, the county administration to make each piece of county government vital, useful, and beneficial to the community as a whole. Carl, over the last eight and a half to nine years when you've been our corporation council, you've seen a lot of things and got a good feel for county government. But what do you see as our biggest challenges that are coming up in the future that we have to face? Most definitely the budget. The inability of the state of Wisconsin to get their financial house in order trickles down upon us and makes it harder and harder for us to not only do the mandated tasks required of us, funded or unfunded, but also it makes it more difficult to do the ongoing activities that people expect of their county governments. We expect that our county government is going to provide quality airport. We expect our county government is going to provide security through our law enforcement, an appropriate jail setting for offenders. We expect our health and human service department to provide services to those in need in our community. And it's just impossible or becoming nearly impossible with the constraints that each year's budget from Madison imposes upon our local unit of government. And something's got to give sooner or later. They either have to give us the ability to raise revenues in some other fashion or they've got to supply more money for us if they expect us to do those services or keep the high level of services up that our community expects. But we just have the most current budget and I know that you two are very familiar with the fact that the shared revenues has been flat since how long? 20 years, something like that where the amount of resources the state gives to the county to assist them has been flat and now we're down, what, 3% this year I think from even the flat line that we've had for the last 20 years. It becomes incredibly difficult for you, Mike, as a decision maker for the county to make the tough choices. It becomes incredibly difficult for you, Adam, as the administrator to put into place the decisions that the county board requires of you. And unless we get something solved on the state level, we're always going to be struggling on the county level. Thanks for your perspective on that, Carl. With that, I'll turn it back over to Adam. While you set a mouthful there, it is getting more challenging. Unfortunately, we have a lot of good people in place here and the county boards made good decisions in the past that have helped us be successful today. We're looking to make changes now that will help us in the future. It's just an ongoing circle. And as you work with me and the county board and department heads, I know one of the key things that you assist with is the development of resolutions and ordinances, which is really what the county board uses to make their decisions. And some of our viewers might not be aware, well, what's the difference between a resolution and an ordinance? Well, for the most part, a resolution is an expression of the county board's decision on something of a one-shot deal. The county board may pass a resolution saying, we are going to approve a union contract, or we are going to give the planning director the green light to apply for a grant. In contrast, an ordinance is a more permanent thing. It's an ongoing thing. So for example, the county board may pass an ordinance saying, if we're going to lease space at our county airport to people to put up their own individual hangers on our plot of land, here are the standards that we're going to require of every hanger that goes up there. Similarly, we've got ordinances that deal with ground water, non-metallic mining, some regulations dealing with the subdivisions and things like that. They're a more permanent type of expression of the county's will. So big terms, 34 county board supervisors, there's about eight or nine standing committees, about 115,000 people that live in Sheboygan County. If they want something done, if they want a position taken, if they see an opportunity for a change that requires county board action, not an administrative task, but a policy change, how does the process work, how do they get the ball rolling? Well, the best thing they can do is to contact their own county supervisor. We've got 34 county supervisors, as you've indicated, that comes out to whenever for every three or 4,000, something like that. It's amazing to me how few people know who their county supervisor is. That county supervisor is ready, willing, and able to listen to the constituent, and find some answers out if there's a question, or to bring forward a piece of legislation if the constituent feels that it is of validity and the supervisor agrees. There's a lot of opportunity for the county board to be involved in making life in our community better, and it's a two-way street. They need to know the ideas that their constituents have, and if the constituents give the information, it just improves things all around. Very good. Well done. We're in the midst of developing our 2010 budget right now, and as Carl touched on earlier, with the state budget deficit being at about $6.6 billion, and by the time you see this program, the state budget has been adopted, and we will then work with those rules and implement our own county budget. We're going to have to continue to be more efficient, we're going to have to continue to do more with less, and the county board's going to have to make some tough decisions, whether it's eliminating or reducing programs, looking at new revenue sources. It's really a combination of all above that are going to help us be successful. If you have ideas on how we can become more efficient or more effective, please pass those on to us. Chairman Mike Van der Steen is always readily available to hear suggestions, constructive criticism, every member of the county board, as Carl mentioned. If you don't know who your county board supervisor is, check out the county website, contact our county clerk, and that information will be provided. If you want to contact my office directly, the office of the county administrator, county board chairman, our number is 459-3103. 459-3103, we encourage you to contact us and share your ideas, suggestions for improvement. Also, 22 departments across the board, whether it's the airport or health and human services, our law enforcement with our Sheriff Mike Helpeke, don't hesitate to contact any of our department heads. You may know who some of them are. So, Carl, we certainly appreciate you joining us today. Appreciate the tremendous work that you and your law firm do, a lot of good things happening, and certainly you do a lot of problem solving, which we sure appreciate. Thank you. Until next time, on behalf of county board chairman Mike Van der Steen and the full county board, thank you for joining us, and please pick up that phone, contact your county board supervisor, let us know how we can be of great assistance to you. Thank you.