I attended the Human Services Board last night to get a peek at the new tool that they are going to be recommending for making budget funding decisions. However, there was a scheduling snafu and they had to cut their meeting short after an 45 minutes so that the Public Works and Transportation committee could meet, and 15 minutes after that the Personnel & Finance Committee met – so I just let the camera roll so you could see how the county conducts it’s business. You might be a little surprised. No discussion, rubber stamp and move on.
Funny (not so funny?) sidenote: Room 351 was sitting empty the whole time. Also, Lynn Green says that they booked the room until 7:00.
This is the majority of the meeting . . .
This is the part I accidentally cut off after a few minutes
Here’s the agenda from the meeting last night. Here’s the policies and procedures they are recommending, along with the decision making tool and the recommendation forms they will use.
Right now the way decisions at the county budget are made is quite the mystery. County Executive Parisi presents a budget, the county board supervisors try to add their ideas, there is public hearings and comments . . . and then . . . some magical and mystical happens and suddenly there’s an entirely new budget package that gets rubber stamped and the public gets no input on. It’s goofy. Not transparent at all. And slightly infuriating as a member of the public. This is this year’s version
The new tool that Human Services Board is recommending will go through a quick analysis by the Office of Equity and Inclusion staff, be talked about one last time and then presented to the Health and Human Needs Committee (Heidi Wegleitner is trying to get it properly videotaped by the county, we’ll see, otherwise you’re stuck with me and my snarky comments)
This all came about because there was an audit of the Human Services funding process and a recommendation from that report was
Finding 9a: Contract allocations for programs are not formally aligned with the department’s strategy or highest community needs. Currently, DCDHS attempts to fund all of its programs every year, although there may not be adequate funding to cover the program costs. POS agencies feel that there is not transparency in the process for how program budgets are established. For example, there may be years when services need to be cut for budgetary reasons. An advisory board can assist the County Board and DCDHS with setting priorities and determining which services should be prioritized and which should be eliminated (p. 63).
They outline what the budget process would look like in this document.
The tool asks important questions such as:
– Who benefits from this change?
– Who is burdened by this change?
– Who does not have a voice at the table?
– How can policymakers mitigate unintended consequences?
– Is there an existing program or policy similar to what is being proposed?
– If this is unrestricted revenue, what priorities were identified at the County Board budget hearings that these funds could be used to address?
– If this is unrestricted revenue, what items that did not get funded previously are on the Department’s list of priorities?
– Is this a mandated service?
– Does this address a priority of DCDHS?
– Does this address a priority of the County Board?
– Has this service or service provider met performance expectations?
– Have persons (clients, community, service providers) impacted by this decision been involved in the process?
– Will this decision increase racial equity?
– Are there impacts on specific geographic areas in Dane County?
– Will this impact a specific population based on gender, race, sexual orientation, age, income, criminal background?
– Will this decision decrease racial equity?
– Will this decision leave a gap in service?
The only part that makes me nervous is what is the process to determine the Human Services Department and County Board priorities . . . but otherwise I think the tool is very useful. I wonder how it will be received? The county board members say they want to address racial and economic justice issues, but do they want to be held accountable to that? Will be interesting to see where this goes.
The other two meetings had one interesting moment each.
The Public Works and Transportation (starts about 36 minutes into the video) meeting the Controller (County Finance Department) said that when vendors don’t follow through they have no enforcement mechanism or “claw back” to hold them accountable – or they have never held any contractor accountable.
The Personnel and Finance Committee (starts about 45 minutes into the video) whipped through their agenda without comment on any of the items except to ask why they needed approval to buy food for an orientation with new supervisors – where all of the supervisors will be invited. That’ll be properly noticed and open to the public, right? Right . . .
