In county government most things are carefully controlled and pre-decided. Without significant calls for change, which won’t happen anytime soon, Sharon Corrigan and her minions have carefully choreographed things so that they remain in control – which includes making sure people don’t run against incumbents, guaranteeing who gets elected to the chair, ensuring that the budget gets passed as they want it and determining who the committee chairs are. Last night the Health and Human Needs Committee saw a slight boat rocking . . . which of course, was tightly controlled. Don’t worry your pretty little heads Jeremy Levin was returned to his throne as overlord of the Health and Human Needs Committee . . . but not without at least a little discussion.
So, Richard Kilmer nominated Heidi Wegleitner to be the chair of Health and Human Needs. About 6.5 hours before the meeting, she sent out this email:
Dear Honorable Health and Human Needs Committee Members,
I write to ask for your support of my nomination for Chair at tonight’s HHN meeting. I appreciate Supervisor Levin’s service as Chair over the past term, but believe a new approach is needed as our Human Services Department confronts serious challenges over the next term. Planning and development of the Comprehensive Homeless Day Resource Center and increasing affordable housing accessible to the homeless, long term care changes and the transition to Family Care, sustaining necessary cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for our service providers, supporting a true living wage and addressing alarming workforce shortages impacting people with disabilities, reducing racial disparities and strategic planning for the racial equity and social justice initiative, increasing treatment options and integrating mental health and substance abuse treatment services, and implementation of our sustainability plan, all require more of us as we oversee human services and the $290M budget. I offer an inclusive and collaborative approach to leading this committee — one that will respect and utilize the variety of perspectives, skills, and passions represented by our membership.
We have excellent managers and employees, dedicated agency partners in the community, and committed citizens who can help us address these significant issues, but we need to provide them meaningful and accessible opportunities to educate us. This means preparing timely agendas relevant to the pressing needs identified by our committee and community members and inviting and receiving public comment as much as possible. This means elevating and listening to the voices of those most impacted by our budgets — low income folks, people with disabilities, elders, and our staff and service providers. This is especially important in the budget process. We need more– and earlier– opportunities for public input on budget priorities. The work of HHN, our resolutions, budget amendments, and fund transfers, loaded with acronyms and jargon are often indecipherable to the general public. To advance equity and inclusion, we must be deliberate in removing barriers to public participation, including making our committee work more understandable, increasing the diversity of committee membership, and diversifying the methods and opportunities for community engagement.
If elected chair, I will resume annual meetings with the chairs of our Chapter 15 advisory committees reporting to and impacting the work of HHN. HHN would benefit from more coordination with and advice from our citizen committees. At the annual meeting, and through ongoing communication with committee chairs, I will support development of annual committee work plans and coordinate agendas and issue work across committees to facilitate joint meetings and efficient use of staff time. While I am far from an expert on every human services program or issue, I have developed authentic relationships with many experts in our community. For over ten years I have worked with low income people who depend on Dane County human services to support the health and security of their families. During my County Board tenure I have co-chaired the Human Services Board and the Long Term Support Committee. I am past chair of the City-County Homeless Issues Committee and serve on the Equal Opportunities and Poverty Commissions. Apart from my supervisor role, I serve on the Board of the Homeless Services Consortium of Dane County and United Way’s Healthy for Life Community Solutions Team. I continue to work with alders on the Madison Common Council on our shared priorities, including improvement of homeless services, increased affordable housing, eliminating racial disparities, and fighting poverty. I am a member of the Dane County Housing Summit Steering Committee, which has brought together municipal elected officials and staff, housing providers, and community representatives to promote Dane County’s Affordable Housing Development Fund and collaboration to increase affordable housing options. As a Union leader and elected official, I have engaged labor representatives on County issues impacting public and private employees. Throughout these experiences, I have prioritized community engagement in policy-making and have pursued a hands-on approach to committee work.
It is no secret that I am passionate about the critical issues that come before our committee, but I will be open, fair, accessible, and collaborative. I will work to get the information we need to make policy and budget decisions. I will support our staff as they work diligently to ensure quality human services are available to those most in need. I will seek your input and work to bridge differences in opinion. I will be a zealous advocate for human services funding and our HHN budget amendments and I will accurately report our committee deliberations and priorities to the Personnel and Finance Committee during the budget process.
I value equity, inclusion, and working together and will keep those values central to my approach to leadership.
Thank you for your service and your thoughtful consideration,Heidi
I was actually kinda shocked, I had no clue. Cuz you’re not allowed to rock the boat without punishment of some sort. Which usually comes in the form of bad decisions about services to those who need them the most. (i.e. cuts to TRC funding and tenant services for those outside the City of Madison)
Anyways, Richard nominated Heidi and Nick Zweifel (the vice chair) nominated Jeremy Levin and Levin was about to vote since he had his votes all locked up when . . . surprise . . . Ronn Ferrell, the lone conservative on the committee said he wanted to ask questions. (He can do that without fear of punishment since he’s one of a small handful of conservatives that are so deep in the doghouse the won’t see the light of day for years.)
So he explained that he wanted to ask questions to see who he’d support. Novel idea.
Ferrell to Levin: What are your priorities for this term? Levin says finishing the work they have before us right now, moving forward on the day resource center, we have a site but we need an operator and have to go through the CUP process. The have work to be done on the Family Care 2.0 that is delayed in the legislative process right now. He says Rock County is starting to move in that direction and regardless of how that turns out fee waivers are going the way of the past and it something that will effect how they provide services. He wants to work on the Baker Tilly audit and he thinks they have had success with that.
Ferrell to Wegleitner: Same question. She agrees with Levin that those are the front burner issues, but one important thing for her which was talked about in the email she sent this afternoon, is to figure out a way to better involve the community and get more advice from our committees. They have committees that are struggling with purpose and quorum and we have a lot of big issues to tackle and they need the input from the citizens on the community and those most impacted by our services, she would like to increase our community engagement and make the HHN committee process more collaborative and inclusive and better coordinated with the committees. She says this falls under equity and inclusion.
Levin asks if anyone else has questions before Ferrell can ask another question. They don’t.
Ferrell says at budget time this committee passes multiple amendments to the budget and how would you go about getting the priorities of the committee and the community at large to Personnel and Finance because we all know that yes we may pass a million dollars in increase and that won’t come out of the budget but what would you do to make sure this committees priorities get into the overall budget. (i.e. what will you lobby for in the secret last-minute, can’t be commented on or discussed by committee members uber- amendment)
Wegleitner says that they need to have the conversation when they pass their amendments and provide that input to the chair, they need to communicate the discussion accurately, to record and report the priorities of the committee. She’d like to see them have their budget priorities, even tho the budget happens in the fall and they work hard on it, she’d like to discuss their priorities earlier on, and collectively talk about what we think our priorities are and since we have limited resources maybe we could have more consensus around the amendments and more collaboration on priorities going into that process. Obviously there will be other amendments that people think are important, but its important to accurately report what the committees priorities are, what the votes are and what the discussion was. It’s not about what an individual supervisors priorities are, but what the priorities of the committee are.
Levin says I think we did a good job last budget at transparency with having the amendments posted more than 3 or 4 hours in advance and he’d like to continue that directive from Chair Corrigan and he thinks what they have done the last few years about educating the community about what we are statutorily required to do and our supportive lines and programs that we’re required to do by the state and the different levels of value. That brought in agency folks to educate ourselves about the programs and they should do that again as well. He says when it comes to going before Personnel and Finance, he puts the amendments in the packet for them, he says priorities vary and they should and he thinks alot of times the votes speak for themselves and he takes notes and he relays to the best of his recollection conversation.
Ferrell asks Levin how he sees incorporating the committees input, the public input and priorities into the agenda over the next two years. Particularly those things with which maybe you don’t personally agree.
Levin says they have had joint discussion and often times the committees get a chance to weigh in on items and make sure resolutions they get directed to the committees when they are being routed. He thinks they have a good process and folks get opportunity to testify multiple times on issues at our committee, whether its the budget or the first grand budget meeting at Alliant that comes before the whole board and again in front of us and then the product that goes to Personnel and Finance and that’s three times to testify, potentially the exact same testimony.
Ferrell asks Heidi if she wants to add anything. She she says she wants to return to meetings that Melissa Sargeant had with the chairs of the other committees, she says it was helpful to see what the other issues the committees are working on and coordinate. We need a more intentional, coordinated and deliberate approach to supporting the committees. We have alot of interested people on the committees but they are not sure what they should be working on and don’t know what this committee would find helpful. There are alot of issues that need study and recommendations. In terms of the budget she’d like to get some committees to have more capacity to have more of an advocacy role at budget time. She’d like to build on the budget efforts to get the amendments posted ahead of time online. The budget changes alot from the time the executive sends it to us or the department sends it to the executive. There are all sorts of amendments floating around, there could be all sorts of changes, even if its not a large amount of money or huge percentages, when you are talking about $100,000 to one agency, those are people’s jobs, those are people’s lives, those are people’s lives that depend on those human services and she thinks that two years ago we had a very troubling process under chair Levin’s leadership where amendments were brought to the committee to cut programs and the agencies did not have a heads up, they did not know they were threatened, that is really problematic. If she is elected chair she wants to make sure they are always defaulting on the side of giving people a chance to speak to policy and budget changes, especially at budget time. She would invite earlier and often comment on the budget and its important that the rules are suspended that don’t allow citizen comment more than once on an item before a committee. Those rules should be suspended when there are changes and there are decisions that impact people. Of course we still have to do our work, but she thinks its important to hear from people. That hasn’t been the position of chair Levin and that is something I would change.
Ferrell starts to ask a question again. This time Matt Veldran does.
Veldran asks if Levin can do a better job in outreach to the 4th floor (Parisi)? Levin says he always has an open door and talks with staff, he has a good relationship with staff and one is a former collegue, but he respects the leadership of the county board chair and other committees and won’t overstep his bounds. (WTF?)
Wegleitner says she will continue to reach out to the fourth floor, she has a good working relationship with many human services department staff, she has gotten to know them with her service on various committees and the issues that have come up. She has talked frequently with Jeff Kostelic on issues and she worked closely with many staff on the day resource center that has been going on for years, but particularly and the proposal for an adminstrator and she will work to foster those relationships and find common ground.
Levin asks if there is anyone else? No
Ferrell asks for a one word answer. He says one of his priorities is the day resource center, will they get updates at least once a month so they can keep informed about what is going on. Wegleitner. Yes. Levin. Yeah, I agree with that.
Ferrell asks Wegleitner what a walking quorum is. Wegleitner is says its when you communicate through conversations, without a quorum of committee in a room, when you communicate those conversations with a quorum of the committee.
Ferrell asks if she participated in one in the last week. She say no. Levin also says no.
Richard Kilmer says he got on the committee because he sees a need in the community for more drug treatment and he is curious about how you see addressing that, he knows funds are limited but that is something he is interested in.
Levin asks, drug treatment in terms of . . . ? Kilmer says people who want treatment who can’t get it because it is not available. Levin says he supports the department staff and he has been involved with detox and the street team and he’s supportive of Drug Courts. His history shows support.
Wegleitner says this is a really troubling situation and we need to look at integrating substance abuse and mental health services in our department and we need a variety of treatment options for different populations, including youth through seniors and she would work with the recovery consortium, citizens and service providers to see what the gaps are and how we can address those. It may mean we need to find additional levy or look at our budget priorities but there are alot of people falling through the cracks and she is concerns about the heroin and opiod epidemic and we need to do best practices in response to that and she served on the Long Term Support Committee and they recently had a presentation from Safe Community’s and the work they and the AIDS Resource Center are doing on those issues. She agrees this is a serious concern and she’d like advice from citizens and providers and people who need the services. It impacts everyone from homeless on the street to those who have care but might have burned bridges and find themselves in different situations.
Hayley Young says she wants to get up to speed on the issues and broad overview of what they will be doing? How will you do outreach and integration of the new people on the committee since there are two of them?
Levin says he is always accessible and he has tried to contact them multiple times to welcome them and schedule the meeting and to talk about other issues (ah . . . the walking quorum question!) He would also do an initial binder of the topics and issues and he would be happy to have a discussion with them after they have met with the department.
Wegleitner says its important to have this two-way communication and if elected chair she would value the input of all committee members, she is interested in what issues they think are important and what presentations they would like to see on the agenda. She is willing to sit down and go through things to get people up to speed. She won’t know the answers to all the questions but she will know someone who will, she asks staff questions quite a bit related to things that come up that she is interested in.
The vote is no surprise, all that talk didn’t matter, the votes were locked in before they got there except for Ferrell:
Wegleitner: Wegleitner (Progressive Dane), Ronn Ferrell (conservative), Richard Kilmer (Progressive Dane)
Levin: Levin, Nick Zweifel, Matt Veldran, Haley Young (ran against Progressive Dane candidate)
Another sad, sorry two years. Zweifel was elected Vice President and they went back to their old ways with Zweifel making motions, Levin seconding things and pushing through the agenda like they have to get to the emergency room for a tooth infection. However, there was a discussion at the end about what they want to work on for the next few years, if I find time . . . (not likely to happen) . . .
Same shit, different two years. And they say the county board liberals are all the same and it doesn’t matter . . . it matters. If Angelito Tenorio had been in that seat (well, they would never let that happen . . . ) it would be very, very different.
