 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name's Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with our County Board Chairman, Mike Van der Steen. And today is our 101st program. These have really added up over the years and we have a special guest today who hasn't been with us for a while, our court commissioner, Rebecca Persek. Rebecca, welcome. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. It's nice to have you here. Let's get right into it and start with a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the family court commissioner. Please begin by telling us a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm from Wisconsin. I grew up in Manitowoc County. I'm married for 15 years and I've got two children. I've been a court commissioner for the past five years. For the past five years, has the time flown or has it gone grueling slow? No, it's gone very quickly. What are the differences between a court commissioner and a circuit court judge? Well, there are two major differences. I handle preliminary matters and lots of types of cases and the judges do a lot more final types of hearings. Judges are also elected and I'm appointed by the judges to assume some of their duties. So what types of clients would you see coming through your court versus in a circuit court? Well, I see a lot of the same types of people, the same types of cases, but I'll handle the initial proceedings in those cases. For example, in mental commitment hearings, I'll handle the first hearing or in guardianship cases, I'll handle the first hearing. It's called a probable cause hearing. In divorce cases, I'll often handle the first hearing called a temporary order hearing, which divides up property and sets a placement schedule for children while a divorce is pending until the divorce can be final. I'll do injunction hearings, harassment injunction, domestic abuse injunction hearings. I do a lot of initial appearances in criminal cases where I review the criminal complaint and charges with a defendant, go over their rights with them and take their plea, set a bond. So I do a lot of the initial types of duties that a judge would otherwise have to handle. Now we have five circuit courts, as you're well aware, and one family court commissioner, and you said earlier that the difference is the circuit court judges are elected, you're appointed. How does one become a family court commissioner? What's your history? Well, the statute requires that I be an attorney, that a court commissioner be an attorney who's practiced for at least three years, and that's the base qualification. After that, you have to apply for the position, and I went through an interview process with all the judges, with you, with some other members of the board, some local attorneys, and ultimately I was chosen for the position, which I'm very happy about. And prior to being the Sheboydon County court commissioner, you and I worked with child support in some other areas. I did, I worked as the assistant corporation counsel and child support enforcement attorney. So how long and total was Sheboydon County? 10 years. 10 years. 10 years this year. And that's the same for me, 10 years. So what are the general, you just touched on a little bit, but a general big picture snapshot of the roles and responsibilities of your department? Well, the general snapshot isn't much different than the roles and responsibilities. It's two process cases. We have a lot of cases come through, and we have to keep them moving quickly to comply with statutory requirements in terms of time limits, and make sure that they can get into the circuit courts in a timely fashion. So if some of our viewers could come through the camera here and sit down with you and say, I'm really still not getting this picture here, there's circuit court judges and I recognize they have folks come through and you said you see a lot of the same people, but your primary role is to help make it more efficient, to streamline it. How would you describe your department or your responsibilities? Well, it's simply to handle the initial types of hearings and then the judge handles the meteor part of the case. So I will, for example, in a criminal case, as I indicated, I'll go over the complaint with the criminal defendant. I go over their rights with them. I take their plea and I set a bond. Those are all things that are required by statute that the judges simply don't have time to do. So they assign those duties to me and I do them. And then once that's done, the case moves into the appropriate circuit court branch. And from that point on, if there's a jury trial, for example, the judge will hear that trial. Yet with that said, it seems like you have some pretty high profile cases from time to time. Sure, the judges also do initial appearances in certain types of criminal cases, but I do all of the initial appearances for people who are held in custody, people who are arrested and then put in jail while their case is pending or before the charges are issued. And sometimes, oftentimes it makes sense that those are the most serious types of cases if they're being held in custody. And so, sure, I will handle the initial appearance in those high profile cases and then they'll move on to the circuit court judge. So with all this good work going on, how many employees do you have in your department? We have a total of three, including me. And how's the department organized? Well, I'm the court commissioner. I have an assistant court commissioner who does some of the same things I do. And she also handles all of the small claims trials and pretrial conferences. And then we have a paralegal assistant who is the face of the office who answers questions that the public may have, who schedules all of our court hearings and does all of our office work. Obviously, you've described pretty well your important function of the circuit court system as a whole. How does, where does the circuit court fit into our overall government system? Well, going back to my seventh grade civics class, there are three branches of government. The executive, at the federal level, that's the president and at the state level of the governor. The legislative branch of the government, which is our lawmakers, the people who make the laws. And then the judicial branch. And the role of the judicial branch is to enforce the laws, uphold the laws that are made by the legislators. There are several levels of courts in Wisconsin. The circuit court level is where cases start out and the judges do issue a final decision in those cases, but those decisions are appealable. If someone feels the judge has made a mistake of law, they can appeal the judge's decision to the court of appeals and beyond that to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. So, and you touched on this earlier, but if someone is going to court, under what circumstances would they see you versus see or go directly to a circuit court judge? They would normally see me in the initial types of proceedings. In a criminal case, they'd see me for an initial appearance in an ordinance citation case for disorderly conduct or underage drinking. They'd see me for their initial appearance and if they enter a plea of guilty or no contest, I'm the one who would set out a payment plan on the fine and assess the fine against them. In divorce cases, they'd see me for an initial hearing to set child support, set up a placement schedule, divide property and use of the marital home while the case is pending. In a guardianship case or mental commitment case, they'd see me at the first hearing. They have at a hospital called the Probable Cause Hearing to determine if there's enough evidence to hold them until a final hearing can be held. I render final decisions in some divorces. If it's a stipulated divorce, that means if all of the issues are worked out ahead of time and the parties aren't disputing anything, then I would render a final decision in a divorce. I do about 170 of those a year. I also preside over harassment injunction cases and domestic abuse injunction cases. Very good, nice overview. Thank you. Rebecca, could you tell us a little bit more about the types of cases? You've mentioned some broad categories. Are there some other ones that didn't fit those or maybe more specific cases that are in those broad categories? Well, it's taking injunctions, for example. A domestic abuse injunction involves, it has to involve people who reside together who have a familial relationship with each other, where someone has either physically harmed someone or threatened to do that or destroyed their property or threatened to destroy property or intentionally impaired a medical or physical condition such as withholding medicine from somebody. Those cases all fall under a domestic abuse injunction situation. Arrasment injunction involves cases where someone's intentionally and repeatedly engaging in a course of conduct that has no legitimate purpose. It's only purposes to harass someone else. Criminal cases obviously is governed by our state statutes and what our state legislators define as crimes. I see a lot of domestic abuse related crimes. Unfortunately, a lot of drug crimes in Sheboygan, those numbers have been increasing. Drunk driving offenses, if it's a second or subsequent offense that's considered a criminal offense, those are some of the more specific types of cases. About how many total cases do you go through your office in an average year? Well, we don't keep track of the number of criminal cases because that's a function of how many people are arrested. On a daily basis, I probably see between 10 and 15 criminal defendants per day, on average. Divorce cases, I render decisions, a final decision on a divorce, as I mentioned earlier, about 170 times a year. I also perform weddings. I do about 130 weddings a year at the courthouse. And then as far as harassment injunctions and domestic abuse injunctions, I do a fair amount of those. I would say 50% of my job is really doing the initial appearances in criminal cases and the temporary order hearings and divorce cases. That makes up about 50% of what I do each week. What cases do you find the most routine and then the other one's the most maybe rewarding or interesting that you get involved in? Well, I think the most rewarding cases are the temporary order hearings and divorce cases. And as I mentioned, that would be the first hearing after a couple of files for divorce in Wisconsin, there's 120 day wait from the time you file for divorce until the time you can actually be divorced. And often things are very tense in the home and people aren't able to live together civilly with each other and they need the court to intervene to help them work out an arrangement where they can either share the home or one of them moves out of the home into a different location. They need help coming up with a placement arrangement so that each parent can have time with the children if there are any children. And that's the part of my job that I think is the most challenging but also the most rewarding. I realize that when I make a decision about where the children spend time and under what circumstances that that has the potential to cause a great deal of stress for a family. And I try very hard to take each case very seriously and to come up with a decision that suits them all that meets the needs of all of them but particularly the children coming up with a schedule that's in the children's best interest. So that's very challenging but also very rewarding. I don't really find any part of my job routine. It's very, I have the same types of cases but the facts in each case are different and they're always very interesting. Okay. You had mentioned before that you perform weddings. Are those weddings only performed at the courthouse or do you do that at other sites for the couple that's getting married? Mostly they're performed at the courthouse. I do them usually Friday afternoons and I will occasionally perform a wedding outside of the courthouse. Weddings done outside of the courthouse are first done by our circuit court judges and if none of them are available then I will do a wedding outside of the courthouse. Okay. Is there a charge for being married by the court commissioner? There's a $30 charge to be married at the courthouse. Okay. Now on the other side of things when some of these marriages have problems you do some divorce mediation. Could you tell us a little bit about your mediation programs? Sure. Mediation is required by state law and I don't actually do the mediation myself. I contract with four very capable mediators who've worked for the county for a long time. Two of them have worked for the county since 1989 when mediation was mandated by state law. They're very dedicated, they're very professional and they're all trained to try and help couples resolve placement issues themselves. So they're assigned in cases where the placement or custody of children are an issue. And the goal of mediation is to attempt to allow couples to come up with their own agreement rather than having the court impose a schedule for the children on them. And I think the rationale behind it is that no matter how much information a court has about a family or the children of a family they're never going to be in as good a position as the parents are themselves to know what's best for those children. And so the goal of mediation is to help the parents try to reach an agreement themselves without having to get the courts involved in that aspect of the case. Sounds like it's been successful then. It's a very difficult job and when it's successful it saves the families and also the court system a lot of time and a lot of grief. That's great. What changes have affected your department over the five years while you've been serving as court commissioner? The primary change really is the volume of cases particularly in criminal cases. They keep seeing the numbers go up and up and up and the seriousness of the crimes also seems to be increasing. And then what do you enjoy most about your job? Well, I really enjoy meeting a variety of people listening to their concerns, hearing their case. Everyone, there are two sides to, there truly are two sides to every story and it's always interesting to hear the different perspectives. I enjoy people coming to court with a problem that they're not able to resolve themselves and having them walk out with the decision that they can live with. Sometimes I think just having that framework in place gives them a new starting position to work from. That's great. With that we'll turn it back over to Adam. Rebecca, I could imagine some viewers watching this and thinking, boy, it'd be nice to ask some questions about some of the things that you've just shared and I know you can't give legal advice to folks but if they have some general questions about your role and responsibilities or want to understand what steps to go through, how do they proceed with getting that assistance? Well, they can contact my office and we also have some handouts prepared on things like the mediation process and how it works. We also have some general information available about custody and placement and what those terms mean and they can get any of that from my office. There's also a fabulous website available that is linked through the county website for people going through different types of cases. It has forms that they need and explanations about how to fill out those forms and what to expect. So those are two excellent places to go. You can call my office or you can look at the county website. Over the last five years with the increased caseload that you're working with and you mentioned earlier three person department or family court office, what pressures are you feeling with keeping up with that workload and what do you see in the future from a standpoint and making sure you get the resources you need to effectively serve the people? Well, I haven't had much trouble keeping up with the caseload because I have certain blocks of time designated to handle cases. It's been difficult, the main difficulty really has been when someone files a harassment injunction or a domestic abuse injunction, those cases have to be heard within 14 days of the date of filing and often my calendar is so full that I can't fit them in and that causes some juggling. That's been more of a problem over the last couple of years. One of the problems isn't with me per se, but the district attorney's office is understaffed at this point and there's no funding available to hire additional attorneys. The same with the public defender's office, they're understaffed and they don't have any money available to hire attorneys. So often the court, not just my court but the circuit courts are left waiting for a period of time because the attorneys who need to be in our courts to handle the cases in our courts are tied up in another branch. And so that can cause some backlog. Those have been the two main issues. I know district attorney Joe DeCecco has definitely lobbied at the state level to get more funding for district attorneys in his office and studies have shown that we are one of the most understaffed EA offices and of course that all fits into the cycle. Yet at the same time we have an economy that unfortunately seems to be taking a significant downturn, we have statutory caps in place about how much levies can increase. We have frankly a state that right now is really hurting from a financial standpoint and as you look at that and you look at the very important work that the court system does, what do you see on the horizon or what opportunities do you hope come forward to address some of those challenges? Well I wish I had some answers to that Adam, that's something I think that all of state government and county government is struggling with. I mean I guess because I work in the court system I'm a little bit biased. I'd like to see more funding for district attorneys, for public defenders, for law enforcement. Where that funding's going to come from I don't know. It's something that our legislators excuse me are going to have to do to prioritize what they feel is important, what their constituents feel is important and there are certainly no easy answers. What do you, if you had to say what your biggest challenge or top two or three biggest challenges are in the next two, three, five years, what do you think they are? Well frankly, one of the biggest challenges I think facing our county is that there's a bit of a revolving door with certain types of offenders, offenders who are involved in drug abuse or alcohol abuse and there's not a lot of funding available for programming for those people. And I think we tend to look at programs in isolation when we try to assess a value or put a value on them and that's very difficult to do because when someone's struggling with drug or alcohol abuse that trickles down to affect their lives and the lives of the community in so many ways, I see, I think I mentioned last time I was on this program, one of the things that really shocked me when I became a commissioner is that every single day since I've been a commissioner I've had at least one and usually more than one domestic violence related incident in court, a criminal case and I would say well over 95% of those involve drug or alcohol abuse. So when you don't treat someone for their alcohol abuse, often that impacts their family negatively, it involves criminal charges, it involves a lot of expense to the family to try and clear those up. It has an impact certainly on the children, it has an impact on the party's marriages and relationships and all of that has an impact on the rest of society. So again, I don't know what the answer is and I don't think that there are any easy answers. Studies have shown that successful drug and alcohol treatment requires a long-term commitment, usually a year of treatment or more before the treatment's actually going to be successful and stick with somebody and that costs a lot of money and that money's not available. Chairman Vanderstien and I just this morning were talking about our overall programs and services that the county provides and we went through, as you recall, about four or five years ago, a program evaluation and prioritization process and identified 206 programs, some of which in fact about half of which are state mandated programs, things we absolutely have to do and others that are discretionary. And as you're making a very good point, some of these situations with drug or alcohol abuse, it is so expensive once people go over the deep end and you have to go through the court system and put them in jail and what it means for the family and everything else and earlier we can be proactive and provide assistance and support the better. But unfortunately, those require discretionary type programs that because of budget constraints and state caps and frankly just people wanting to see their property taxes kept in check, it's difficult to get support for those types of discretionary programs. So it's pay me now or pay me later and of course as you well know and certainly Mike, the pay me later approach tends to be a heck of a lot more expensive. Yeah. Well, I haven't analyzed it that deeply and but I think anecdotally from what I see I would tend to believe that that's true and that's when I make clear that I'm not trying to make excuses for people who commit crimes if they're drug or alcohol abusers but I also think it's important to look at the cost to society when we don't treat those people. You have an excellent working relationship I know with the child support and the district attorney and the clerk of courts and corporation council and the health and human services department. I know you're obviously as you said earlier you've been here 10 years now but I've been very impressed with the working relationships you've established with these other departments. Touch on that just for a moment and the importance of those working relationships and the folks that provide you assistance. You know, I have really been impressed before I worked as assistant corp council I did have a job where I work for a firm with a statewide practice and I had an opportunity to make court appearances in many counties in our state. And I've been very impressed with Sheboygan County in terms of the accessibility of the courts here the accessibility of the judges the way that all of the departments seem to work together. It is important because we're all part of the same county government and I think that all of our departments have a good working relationship with each other. We're all interconnected. And I think, Adam, you do a very good job of helping maintain that connection between departments and getting the point across that we are a team that needs to work together. So in terms of touching on the importance I think just because we're part of the same unit of government it's important for us to cooperate and I think that everybody has. Thank you for the compliment of the judges. I know I feel very highly of a great deal of respect for you and the job you do. And of course your dedication is so important because if you're gone or left a three person office that would be a tremendous void to fill. Terry Burke, Judge Burke was your predecessor and also a very good person a very good family court commissioner. And my understanding is you two have maintained an excellent working relationship and you're frequently interacting with the judges and communicating. Judge Burke has been an incredible asset to me when I started my job in particular he offered a lot of assistance and he was starting a new job himself but took the time out of his schedule to assist me to make sure that my transition into the office was smooth and that services weren't interrupted. And all of the judges have always made themselves available to me to answer any questions that I have and to be supportive and I appreciate that. Well, we sure appreciate your time this morning. We know you're very busy and very much appreciate the good work that you're doing for Sheboygan County. As you mentioned and I mentioned earlier 10 years for the two of us here and I know in that 10 year time I've heard nothing but compliments about your professionalism and the job you've done. So I appreciate that, Rebecca. In fact, as I sit here interviewing you I'm wondering is this someone who perhaps might run for a judgeship someday but I won't put you on the spot with that. I appreciate that. But very much appreciate the work you do. Thanks for joining us. All right, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next month, Chairman Van der Steen and myself are a little undecided who our guest will be because we're gonna be coming up on our 102nd program and 102nd program over a 10 year period. So what we're thinking about doing is reflecting back a little bit where we've been, where we're at, where we're headed. There certainly have been a lot of challenges over the years but a lot of good things that have happened due to the good people working for Sheboygan County. So until then, on behalf of the Sheboygan County Board thanks for joining us.