Dan Robinson

This coming Wednesday night, at the May 15th County Board meeting, two items that I have been pushing will come up for a vote. The first is a resolution by the County Board asking the state legislature and Governor Walker to accept the enhanced Medicaid funds being offered by the federal government. These funds will increase access to BadgerCare and provide people on the edge of poverty with basic health care insurance. The resolution was approved last month by the county’s Human Services Committee. I believe this is an important issue for the county, and I discussed my reasons in an opinion piece in the Green Bay Press-Gazette recently, which I also posted here on this web site if you’d like to read more: Wisconsin should accept federal Medicaid funding.

The second item deals with asking the County Executive to increase funding in the county’s 2014 budget for our community’s Drug Court, and to provide funds to start a Mental Health Court. This request was also passed at the April Human Services Committee meeting and is now going to the full County Board for its approval. At that meeting, I will also be adding increased funding for the current Veterans’ Court. For those folks who are unfamiliar with these efforts, the Drug, Veterans’, and proposed Mental Health Courts deal with people involved in a non-violent crime. They are required to go through a rigorous program that provides access to treatment (drug, alcohol, mental health services, etc.), reporting on a regular basis to the court on their progress, and taking steps to turn their lives around. In the case of the Veterans’ Court, it provides the person with a mentor who is also a veteran. The Drug Court has already had folks “graduate” from the program who have put their lives back together.

Courts of these types are found around the state, and they provide an important alternative to incarceration. Right now, Wisconsin has 23,000 inmates – more than doubled from 1995 (around 11,000). The average annual cost to keep an inmate in prison is $32,000, and we, the tax payers of this state, spend more on prisons than for the University of Wisconsin system. 90% of inmates will return to society, so it’s important that they receive treatment and support so they do not become repeat offenders. Drug courts are six times more successful rehabilitating inmates than prison programs, and they’re less expensive.

With alternative and diversion programs like the Drug, Veterans’, and proposed-Mental Health Courts, we can lower the cost to taxpayer, increase the number of people recovering their lives, and improve public safety, because people are not reoffending. It’s a win-win-win, which is why I believe the county needs to increase its funding for these diversion programs in its 2014 budget and why I hope the County Board will vote to support that idea.

My oldest daughter Anna is doing volunteer work in Washington, DC this year, so my wife Laura and I have been out to see her a couple of times. We have been to the city before, but we realized it had been a number of years when we came across the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial, which wasn’t there the last time we visited. A few of FDR’s quotes engraved in the walls of the memorial struck me as so appropriate to our situation today:

 No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally it is the greatest menace to our social order.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.

In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice… the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.

We face many similar challenges in 2013: unemployment and underemployment for so many people, a growing disparity of wealth, immigrants sometimes treated with hostility and suspicion, and a host of other problems and issues. Yet we also have so many people in our community who have chosen a path of social justice, faith, hope, and love both for themselves and for others they know and don’t know. It is that community of people that gives me a belief in the possibility of the common good for all people.

This morning the Green Bay Press Gazette ran an opinion piece I wrote about the opportunity Wisconsin has to obtain increased Medicaid funding. I think this makes a lot of sense not only for the state, but also for Brown County. Click here to see the article on line, but I’ve also pasted it below. Let me know what you think… I’m always interested in hearing from folks about important issues like this.

Wisconsin should accept federal Medicaid funding

At last night’s County Board meeting, we considered a resolution to take $150,000 out of the county’s general fund reserve (the county’s savings account) to temporarily increase staffing in the district attorney’s office in order to lessen the backlog of drug-related cases. $78,000 would be spent to hire an attorney, $54,988.50 for a legal assistant, and $16,679 for necessary equipment, all to be used by no later than December 31, 2014.

Currently, the county’s district attorney’s office has 12.2 (full-time equivalent) attorneys working there, and according to a recent state study of its case load, it should be staffed by 24 attorneys, so we’re only at half-staff levels. The number of drug-related cases has significantly increased with the activities of the county’s Drug Task Force, and right now, there’s a backlog of around 584 referrals, with each referral having an average of three charges against them.

Originally, I was planning on voting against this measure, and said so at the beginning of the debate on this, for four reasons:

• The district attorney’s office is a state funded-office, and if the county pays now for an attorney – even temporarily – I’m afraid the state will never meet its responsibility to our residents and increase the staff;
• If we fund this position on a temporary basis now, I’m concerned it will turn in to a permanent position and require permanent funding that shouldn’t come out of the general reserve fund;
• This expenditure should be debated at the annual budget time (in the fall), rather than be a special expenditure in the middle of the year. While it did come up during last fall’s budget debate, it was at the last minute when there was no time to gather the necessary information to make an intelligent decision on it; and
• If the goal with this is to increase public safety, I’m not sure this is the best way to do that. In a world with limited resources, are there other ways to spend $150,000 that would increase public safety more, even when it comes to drug crimes? I’ve heard more than one police officer say that we need to put more effort into drug use prevention and rehabilitation rather than increasing arrests.

Having said all that, after listening to the debate last night, I ended up voting to support the measure (which passed with 25 ayes and 1 abstention). It was clear from the discussion that the state legislature was not going to take to address the staffing levels this budget cycle, and so if we wanted anything done we would have to do it ourselves. Also, District Attorney David Lasee made a strong appeal to help keep the office from “drowning” in the number of drug cases it is facing. In the end, people need to be held accountable for their actions, and while not all the cases are serious, some of them do involve violent acts and drug dealing, which we need to pursue.

As part of my vote to support this measure, however, I put in a “communication” to the board that we need to increase the amount of money in the budget this coming fall to support “diversion courts” for mental health- and drug-related cases. These courts are effective in dealing with those convicted of crimes, to decrease re-offending, and to help offenders rebuild their lives to be productive, contributing members of our community. We currently have a drug court and a veterans court in Brown County, and I would like to see these efforts grow. If we’re going to increase our prosecutions, we also need to increase our efforts to keep people from breaking the law and entering the system in the first place. There’s more than one way to promote public safety.  

Last night I attended by last committee meeting as a member of the City Council, and last week was my last City Council meeting as a member of that body. During the Council meeting, we considered two items of note:

• Walgreens – The Council voted 5-2 to give the final OK to the Walgreens development in De Pere’s east-side downtown. I again voted against it. While I can see some of the benefits that will hopefully come from the store, the vast majority of the constituents I heard from were in opposition to the development. That, coupled with some concerns about the safety and flow of traffic patterns around the store, swayed my vote. Before the meeting, I talked with Mr. Ken Pabich, our City Planner, about parking concerns that had also been expressed, and he said that a parking study involving the surrounding businesses would be done to address those concerns. During the Council meeting I asked the developers if they were flexible on some of the parking issues and they said that they were.
  
• Health Department - The Council voted unanimously to keep our City’s Health Department and to not merge with the County. I was glad to see this be the outcome, as I believe the money that would have been saved was not worth sacrificing the service to our community that we get from having our own local department. Having said that, during the meeting, I suggested that the Council hold off on a vote for two weeks until the second meeting of April, giving the public a chance to weigh in on this. Merging with the County was estimated to save the City $87,159, not an insignificant amount of money. The timeline for possibly merging with the County would have allowed for a two week delay, and having this meeting’s discussion on the cable-access channel for people to see would have helped get the word out about this decision. People could have then let their alderpersons know their opinions. That would have counted me out of having a vote, but I think public input is worth it. In the end, though, no one else supported that idea, and the Council decided to vote, in which case I was glad to support keeping the Health Dept. in-house.
  

Finally, while I’ll still be working on behalf of De Pere’s District 19 residents on the County Board (and still writing here), I want to thank the voters and residents of De Pere’s City District 2 for their support over the last six years. It’s been a privilege to be an alderperson and I’ve enjoyed it a great deal. While I’ll be keeping busy with County business (and enjoying that as well), I will miss my time on the City Council. I recently had a “Letter to the Editor” in the Green Bay Press-Gazette to that effect, and you can find it here. But I’ve also pasted the text below.

“I would like to thank the residents of De Pere’s 2nd district for their support during my six years on the City Council. It has been an honor to serve as an alderperson and one that I’ve enjoyed a great deal. During my time on the council, I have been impressed with how much our residents care about our community and grateful for the good ideas and input you’ve been willing to share with me. I’d also like to thank the city staff, Mayor Walsh, and the other council members (past and present) as well, for their good and conscientious service to De Pere. It’s been a privilege to work with each of you. I look forward to still serving the people of De Pere and the whole Brown County community as a member of the County Board.”

This coming Wednesday, the De Pere City Council will be meeting at 7:30. The reason the meeting is taking place on Wednesday is because of the spring elections taking place the day before, the first Tuesday of the month when the Council would normally meet. By ordinance, the Council meetings are never held on an election day.

At the meeting, the Council will be considering whether or not to merge with the County’s Health Department. I’ve given some background on this issue in a previous post, so here’s the link:

City Health Department merging with County’s?

Just go towards the bottom of the post, as I also wrote on a few other subjects at that time as well. Let me know what you think about this. If you’d like to see the background on the decision, you can view it on the city’s website where the council meeting packet is located. Here’s the link for that (it’s item #8):

De Pere City Council meeting packet for April 3, 2013

I’m still more or less 50-50 on the decision, so I’ll be anxious to hear what information is shared at the meeting, including any final numbers we received from the County.

This past week, a number of items were dealt with in various meetings, so here’s a quick update on what’s happening in Brown County government:

• Strategic Planning – Before the Brown County Board meeting this past Wednesday, a small group of us, including the Board chair and the Brown County Executive, met to prepare the strategic planning process approved by the County Board at our February meeting. I’m excited to be part of putting this effort together, as I believe it will finally provide an opportunity to coordinate planning and budget decision-making across the entire County government. The first stage is a Board visioning session in June, where we’ll discuss what elements we believe the County’s Mission and Goals should be. The second stage will be two listening sessions in September, when residents of the entire county are invited to let us know what they think the priorities of the County should be. In the third stage, the County Executive will take the information from the Board and the listening session, as well as input from county staff, to create a strategic plan for the county that he will share during his 2014 State of the County address in late winter of next year. A new County Board will be elected that April, but in the fourth stage of the process, they will have an opportunity early in their term to give feedback on that strategic plan, providing the County Executive with direction on the 2015 budget. The strategic plan in turn will give the Board direction when they make final decisions on the budget during the fall of 2014. It’s a long process, and I may not be around to see it come to full fruition, but I believe this is necessary if we are to move Brown County forward in a wise, efficient, and effective way.
• Pay Scales for Housekeepers employed by the County – At our meeting last week, the County Board considered a change in the pay scale for Housekeepers employed by the County. Up to now, Housekeepers were paid three different wages, depending on when they were hired. The County’s Human Resources department re-examined those wages, including comparing them with area companies and national wage averages, and the department recommended lowering the pay range to $11.13-13.27/hour for NEW hires – NOT existing employees – which represented a decrease of up to $8/hour when compared to existing pay for some long-term employees. Locally, comparable wage scales included Seek Employment ($12.50), Outagamie County ($12.33-16.84) and UWGB (state rate, $11.28-15.19). National pay averages ranged from $9.01-$10.62/hour. As you can see, the proposed pay range, while higher than the national average, was lower than any local comparables. While I believe it is very important to wisely use the community’s tax money, I also believe we need to pay a fair and livable wage, out of fairness to our workers but also so we can retain good employees. It is more expensive to constantly be training new employees than it is to pay a fair and  livable wage in the first place. One complicating factor to all of this is that the comparables do not include benefits, so I’ve asked our HR department to include benefit comparables in the future. At the Board meeting, I supported a motion by Supervisor Tom Sieber to raise the range to $11.81-$12.53, still a significant reduction. That motion failed.  I voted against the new wage scale but it was approved by a majority of the Supervisors. During the discussion of the pay scale, someone tried to make the point that this must be an appropriate wage, because the County will get hundreds of applicants for these jobs at this pay. It’s probably true that we’ll get that many applicants, but I think that show instead that the economy is still struggling, particularly for people on the lower end of the income scale, and not necessarily that the pay is fair and livable. The County is doing a Compensation and Classification study to set some guidelines for wage scales throughout the organization. I believe this is an essential task for the County to make wise decisions that allow us to make the most out of our tax dollars without penalizing people who work for the community. Three supervisors will be serving on the group putting this together, and I’ve volunteered to be one of those folks. I’ll let you know more as the work of the group progresses.
• Low-Frequency Noise and Infrasound Ordinance (including wind turbines) - As I wrote about in my March 3rd post, “Questions about proposed Low-Frequency Noise and Infrasound County ordinance,” the county has been considering drafting a revised noise ordinance that would regulate these sounds. This question has come mainly, but not exclusively, from the issues surrounding the industrial wind turbines in the southern part of Brown county. I’ve had some serious questions about this, and you can read about that in my March 3rd post, so I won’t restate them all here. However, at the Brown County Board meeting this past Wednesday, many representatives of the group fighting the wind turbines were present to make the case that the county should spend up to $4,000 to hire an acoustical sound expert to draft this proposed ordinance. The county’s attorney agreed that if an ordinance were drafted, she did not possess the technical knowledge to do so, and that for the ordinance to be effective, we should hire an expert to draft it, with input from her. During their time speaking, the residents provided some answers to the questions I had posed earlier, but not all. Unfortunately, the rest of the questions can really only be answered once we know the specifics of what the ordinance would say. So, after publicly re-stating my concerns about this ordinance, but acknowledging that some answers had been provided that night, I voted to move forward with the drafting of the LFN/Infrasound measure. I stated that I could still vote against the final measure if I felt it was not in the best interests of the community or that the many questions facing this ordinance could not be answered adequately. My main concern is that we are addressing a ten-mile-wide problem (the wind turbines) with a forty-mile-wide law (that covers the whole county), without really knowing the implications of what we’re doing nor how we’ll be able to enforce it. However, I honestly believe that, for whatever reasons, the people who have moved out of their homes because of the illnesses they’ve experienced have done so because they really are sick. While this is more appropriately a state issue, I want to make sure we consider all possible solutions to help them and to address what is a very complex problem.