Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. Good morning, everyone. It is nine a.m. I will call to order the Dane County Broadband Task Force on. We will start off with a roll call.

All right, uh, Postler also here. Furman from in here. I know him. I don't want to hear, uh, Roscoe. Do not see Adam. Uh, you know, uh, you don't hear. Violante. Edgerton.

It's a tin here.

And Lauber, let me know that she would not be able to make it and I see Adam just joined. And then we prefer it as well. Let me know that he likely would not be able to join. So good on quorum.

All right, so with a quorum being present, we'll move on to our first item of business, which is introductions of the committee. So we do have new committee members, a few and several that are returning. I guess, Jaron, I'll let you start with your introduction since you're a star of the show.

Good morning, folks. Jaron McCollum, I'm the broadband coordinator. My position is housed within the Dane County Planning and Development Department. I was hired in August of 2023. Prior to that, I worked at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. They've got a Wisconsin broadband office over there, so I worked there doing a number of different things. It was a relatively small team, so I kind of wore many different hats, but joined PSC in... 2015-16 timeframe and then came to the county in 2023. Prior to that, prior to PSE, I actually somewhat briefly worked at TDS Telecom, so a relatively large national provider that is based here in Madison and Middleton. Yes, in terms of my role here with the county as broadband coordinator, a lot of, you know, facilitating this group and the great work that you all are doing. This group has obviously been in existence for a number of years now, different iterations, different topics, different focuses, different work priorities, but, you know, this is Continues to be a great group of folks and a lot of work gets done. I do a lot of communication with communities and internet service providers, tracking of grant funding availability, something we may talk about a little bit later on during my updates. But yeah, it's an exciting role, exciting time. There's a lot of dollars being put into broadband at the state level, certainly the federal level. So I'll pause there, but happy to be a part of this group. Awesome. Thank you.

We'll go through our virtual members next. Sarah, if you want to introduce yourself.

Sure. Good morning. Sarah Edgerton. I am the Chief Information Officer for the City of Madison, as well as the IT Director. And I also am the Chair of MUFN, which is the Metropolitan Unified Fiber Network. And very excited to be part of this group, as I've been since the very beginning. So hello, all.

Welcome back.

Thank you. Moving on to John. Hi, my name is John Vano, and I am the general manager for Melhorb Telephone Company. We do business as MHTC, an internet service provider in Dane County. We also cover Iowa County as well. So happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you, John. And on to Mark.

Mark is not technically, Mark's with PSE. Oh, I suppose, yeah. Sorry, that's correct.

Let's go to Adam then. Good morning. Adam Roschka with Charter Communications. People often ask me, are you Charter Communications? Are you Spectrum? Charter is our parent company. Spectrum is our brand. So I go by Charter for now, but actually we're probably going to be transitioning over to Spectrum as our facing entity in government affairs very soon. I'm the Associate Vice President of State Government Affairs for For Charter, I've got responsibility for all of our government affairs activity in Wisconsin and Michigan. I've been with Charter for nine years. Prior to that, I worked with the Cable Association. So I've been working in the cable broadband space for 18 years. And then before that in the legislature, and I clerked the utility committee, which kind of got me into the telecom space many years ago. So I'm in downtown Madison, right on the other side of the square from the city county building. So thank you again for having me on the committee. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Is Cassandra available? S is also not technically a member, but certainly Katz and Mark both are very involved, I would say.

Well, good to see you both. So thank you. And we'll move in the room on to Supervisor Fuhrman.

Thank you. My name is Keith Furman. I represent District 10 on the Dane County Board, which is on Madison's west side. I'm an IT professional in real life, and I've had previous experience with this topic. It was both on Madison's now-defunct Digital Technology Committee and then did a special task force on digital inclusion strategic priorities in 2021.

uh one i guess that was um that looked at issues um related to this so i'm excited to be here thanks thank you and on to state rep udell all right well thank you uh good morning uh uh representative randy udell i represent district 47 which is fitchburg stoughton five surrounding towns of stoughton and uh half of mcfarland um I'm a former supervisor for District 33, which was all of Fitchburg. And I'm also retired from AT&T with 30 years of network engineering experience. And I am an at-large member, I believe, Chair Miles appointed. I'm not sure if that went to a vote on the floor, but he reached out to me and I accepted. So once again, I'm pleased to be here.

Glad to have you back with, you know, All the different titles. Whatever we're calling you, we're glad to have you. Just call me Randy. It'll be the easiest. Awesome. Thank you so much. Then that leaves it to me. I'm Supervisor Don Posler for District 29 on the County Board, which covers some rural areas, also some urban townships. Towns of Vienna, Dane, Springfield, Middleton, and just a little sliver of the town of Verona and also the village of Dane. So kind of the central north portion of the county for me. This will be my second term on the broadband task force, and I'm very excited to kind of continue the work that we have and to kind of see where we're going to move with this pivot now that we've gotten through a lot of the kind of funding components and we shift our focus onto the equity and access side. of broadband. So I'm very glad to be here. Okay. Well, thank you all for introducing. We'll move on then to item two, which is election of officers. And so for this, I will open up nominations for chair.

I would like to nominate Supervisor Postler for chair.

All right, there's a nomination for Supervisor Posler for chair. Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Saying it for a third time, are there any other nominations? Hearing none, I will close nominations for chair. And the nomination is for Supervisor Postler for chair. Barring any disagreement, we would, I guess, take that by unanimous consent of the committee. And hearing none, it will be so recorded. All right, onto nominations for vice chair. And I would like to make a nomination for Supervisor Keith Furman to serve as vice chair. Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Hearing no other nominations, I will now close nominations for Vice Chair. And barring any objection from the committee, I would like to record it as unanimous consent to elect Supervisor Fuhrman as Vice Chair. And hearing none, it will be so recorded. All right, so we have our officers elected. Thank you all for that. On to item B, which is our consideration of minutes from the February 4th task force meeting. Somebody would like to make a motion.

I knew I wasn't there, so. All right. A motion to accept. I'm sorry, you're asking for the broadband and coordinated updates?

For the minutes from February 4th. Oh, the minutes.

Sorry, I'm jumping ahead here.

No worries.

All right. I'll make that motion, John. All right.

Thank you.

Caught me off guard.

No problem. All right. So we have a motion by Van Oyen to approve the minutes from February 4th. Are there any additions, corrections? Hearing none, all in favor of approval, say aye. Aye. And any opposed? And the motion has carried. Those minutes have been approved. We have no actionable items today, but we do have a report to committee, our broadband coordinator update.

So yeah, I briefly talked about that. Well, I didn't really. I kind of teased it, I guess, in my introduction there. But on May 19th, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin announced the availability of broadband expansion grant funding. at least to me, it certainly came as a surprise. You know, I subscribed to the governor's press releases, and I saw that one come in at, you know, 5 a.m. or something when I checked my computer in the morning, and I was a little surprised to see that. I can talk a little bit more about the timing later on, but a little bit about the logistics. So there is $60 million available for broadband expansion grant funding, and this is state-specific funding so there hasn't been a state broadband expansion ground grant round since i think 2023 so there's been a large influx of federal funding and therefore the state has um tapered off or backed off on their particular funding uh broadband specific funding just because the the bead program in particular put forth about a billion dollars for wisconsin for broadband expansion so um So that's why kind of there has been, I guess, a lull in state-specific funding for broadband expansion. But I will say that the state broadband expansion grant program has been a longstanding, successful program, and it first started in fiscal year 2014, I believe. At the time, it was only half a million dollars, and it's grown since. But So at a very high level, it's available to expand access to high-speed Internet to unserved communities throughout the state. The grant funding in terms of eligibility is available to organizations, telecommunications utilities, or a city, village, town, or county that has partnered with an otherwise eligible entity like a telecommunications provider for the purpose of providing Internet connectivity to more homes and businesses in Wisconsin. as kind of the reality often ends up being that Internet service provider or the telecommunications utility ends up applying for the dollars or applying for a grant in partnership sometimes with whether it's a city, village, town or county. There are points, additional points awarded for public private partnerships and kind of the robustness of that public private partnership. So typically the commission has looked highly upon public private partnerships. Um, sometimes that's at the town level, sometimes at the County level, sometimes it's both. Um, it really is kind of, uh, application specific. So, um, a bit about the timing. And I think maybe, uh, when I'm wrapping up here, I might be curious to hear what the, you know, Adam and, and, and John may have to say, but to me, the timing is, is, is a bit interesting. Um, You know, be the broadband equity access and deployment program was a large federal program that put forth 42 plus billion dollars across the country. Wisconsin was allocated about a billion dollars of that. And just recently or, you know, relatively recently, that was all approved by the federal government. Wisconsin had to put forth a big plan to how to utilize those dollars and sent it to the federal government. It was approved. And a lot of those grant agreements are either recently executed or in progress, or they're working towards getting those executed to really put in motion that, you know, uh, the, the bead funding that was put forth for Wisconsin. So a lot of locations in Wisconsin, uh, will be receiving additional, you know, uh, upgraded, uh, broadband internet service as a to me, it was a little interesting to kind of put forth $60 million when we're, the bead really is kind of starting to hit the ground now, hit the ground. So, and it's also kind of interesting given that there's a lot of other federal funding coming to Dane County, the state, particularly, you know, in Western Dane County, TDS Telecom has a large portion of funding through the enhanced, the EACAM program. And I know MHTC has, EACAM funding coming to portions of Western Dane County as well. And, you know, this is also kind of on the heels of particularly Charter Spectrum wrapping up their RDOF, their Rural Digital Opportunity Fund expansion throughout, you know, the state, county, and the nation. So there's a lot of different federal funding streams at play. There's, you know, now a new state funding at play. So it's... I wouldn't say it's the most straightforward timing in terms of, you know, there's a lot on the plate right now, but that doesn't mean that it's not a great opportunity. So a little bit about kind of some of the logistics in terms of so across. I'm going to use some kind of general numbers across Wisconsin. There are about. let's just call it 2.3 million, what they're called broadband serviceable locations, basically where broadband could theoretically, you know, mass market broadband could be deployed or is deployed. Of that 2.3 million, there's about 170,000 eligible locations for this particular broadband expansion grant on the $60 million. So a large portion of the state is already, you know, not eligible for the $60 million. Now, in terms of There's kind of eligibility and then priority. So in terms of the priority locations, those are locations that are actually lacking 25 megabits per second down and three megabits per second upload. That's about 120,000. Again, I'm using round numbers here, but of that 120,000, I'm kind of whittling it down here. There's actually a large portion of those locations are actually targeted or, you know, will receive funding through the bead program or the enhanced ACAM program that I mentioned, even program like RDOF. So, the PSC has kind of identified what they're calling these target areas or target locations of which there are about 30 or 31,000 across, excuse me, across Wisconsin. So, you know, you kind of start with a 2.3 total locations. You really whittle it down to where I think the PSC would like to see applications and you get down to about 30,000, you know, 30 or 31,000. And those are target locations again, is that, that don't meet the speed threshold and also don't have an in-progress funding commitment that's either fiber or fixed wireless. So kind of an interesting way to kind of whittle it down, and if we're even honing in a little bit further, in terms of Dane County, there's actually only 152 of these target locations in Dane County, and they're actually pretty... spread out. There isn't a whole lot of concentration. So, for instance, in Vienna, there's 22 locations. In Dane, there's 16. And in Burke, there's 16. In Springdale, there's 10. And that was really only of the municipalities. Those are the only four that had double-digit target locations within the municipal boundaries. And just because there may be 22 in Vienna, for instance, that doesn't mean they're all They may be kind of, you know, a shotgun spread across the township. So I'm still, you know, I'm communicating with providers and I'd be curious to hear what, you know, MHTC and Charter think about the viability of potential, you know, potential application in Dane County. Personally, I struggle a little bit to see the PSC. I struggle to envision a scenario where PSE would approve a grant application where BEAT funding is already coming, or if enhanced ACAM funding is already coming, I'm just not sure that they would see that as the best use or most efficient use of the dollars that are available. Theoretically, there could be an application that would be approved in an enhanced ACAM location or a bead location. I'm just not sure that that would be... I'm just not sure that that's those target locations that they're really looking after. So... doing some more exploring with providers where it might make sense to put forth an application and not even just an application, a competitive application too. Because I think historically this grant program has been very oversubscribed. You know, if they, for instance, if a PNSC previously put out $100 million just to use a round number, they might see 400 million in actual grant requests. So they are, you know, three, two, three, four times oversubscribed. So typically the grant program has been very competitive. I'm not... I'd imagine that'll probably be the case again this time. It might be slightly less competitive just because there are so many other federal funding streams out there, but that's anyone's guess. I can't pretend to know how competitive it may or may not be, but... So I think with that, I kind of buried the lead here. So it opened on May 19th, the grant round, and the applications are due on July 27th. So it is typically, you know, these grant windows historically have been open for about three months. So I think that was pretty consistent this time around as well. The PSC is offering a webinar. on Monday. I think it's June 8th. So I think that's Monday of next week. Yes, at 11 a.m. So I will certainly be tuned into that. If other folks are more, you know, want to learn some more details, I'm sure they'll go into, you know, very in-depth detail about the eligibility and the scoring criteria. I spared you some of the details. And a lot of this is also available online. They've got a full application instructions if you're really curious for more information, but I wanted to share that opportunity. It's something that, you know, it caught me off guard a little bit. I wasn't, certainly wasn't expecting it, but $60 million is a pretty large pool of funding for broadband expansion across the state. So I'm still kind of vetting the viability for an application, particularly in Dane County. And in that sense, it oftentimes does take kind of two to tango, too, just because I'm interested in putting forth an application. I can't go build the fiber myself. So we've got to have a public excuse me, a private provider or a private entity to partner with if we want to to pursue that as a county or even if a township was interested. So I'll maybe pause there. And I'd be curious, I see we've got Mark from PSC online. Mark, if you have any additional thoughts, I'd certainly welcome that. If not, that's okay too. And, you know, I'd be curious if, you know, the providers, you know, John and Adam, is this an, you know, I don't want to make you show your hand entirely, but I'd be curious if this is an opportunity you're interested in, are you interested in exploring? I know this was just only recently announced, I think. you know, the GIS data was only recently, just recently made available. So you're probably still doing some internal evaluating, but I'd open it up if any additional comments.

I don't know if you were asking Mark to go first.

Yeah, I was a little ambiguous with that. Why don't we start with Mark? Did you have anything to add, Mark? Sorry. If not, that's okay, too. I left that a little gray, so that's my fault.

Yeah, no worries. Thanks for having me. Nope, you gave a pretty good overview there. Just want to hit that again, if you're looking at private-public partnerships or partnering, you know, either the county or municipality or if an ISP is looking for looking at, again, that engagement with communities and planning. And again, that'll be weighted on the merit scoring for ISP to show that, you know, they engaged in planning. And again, there's really no criteria in there to say what that is. That'll be on the ISP to show that.

And maybe pivot to the John or Adam if you have additional thoughts. If not, that's okay too.

I know, John, if you wanted to add anything, I have some thoughts I can, I can wait. Yeah. I mean, I think I was surprised as well. I would not that I was, I was expecting another grant round at some point, because I know that there were some, especially in the bonding round, there were some give backs essentially, or defaulted awards. So that made sense at the month that there was still opportunity, you know, financial opportunity out there. I was a little surprised that maybe it didn't happen till.

I think we lost Adam. I'll add my two cents since maybe Adam won't be coming back here. um, overall, I was a little bit surprised for the grant round as well. The grant round is always, uh, welcome and so forth. And when we're, we just started deep diving the grant round here and that on the Dane County side, because of the locations that you mentioned, it doesn't look like there's something that would make sense for us. Uh, but we're still looking through that. Uh, when I look at the Iowa County side, um, for sake of this discussion, it looks like many of the eligible locations, not the eligible and priority locations, the eligible locations are SpaceX locations. So although there's some enforceable commitment there through bead, it does look like, uh, that the PSC has looked at some of those SpaceX locations as locations they would like to target through this grant round and that, um, You know, being that they're SpaceX locations, most likely they're some of the higher cost locations across Wisconsin. So that 30,000 locations, $60 million, $60 million is a lot of money, but these will be some of the highest cost locations that we'll be looking at to improve service to.

I apologize. I think I'm back. I don't know what happened. I've never had that. All my screens went black on me and everything just shut down. I've never had that happen. A gremlin got in my computer. But I heard at the end what John said, and I was going to mention that as well. $2,000 a passing isn't a lot when these are probably all going to be the high-cost passings. I thought the timing, what I was going to mention, I thought was interesting. was I would have thought maybe this would have come out after the bead agreements were all signed and everything was approved by NTIA. Because one of the goals of NTIA is to have 100% of locations served. So I was surprised that there's still these 30,000 out here that are not served. Um, that are eligible, you know, the high target, the target locations. I don't know if that puts the bead plan at risk with the federal government. I think the federal government is somewhat unpredictable, this federal government. So, you know, I was a little surprised there. But we are taking, you know, we'll take a look at it. We just got the BSLs, I think it was yesterday or Monday. And we'll, you know, we'll take a look and make.

Oh, no.

There are some changes to the grid. Yeah, I lose him again. Did I drop off again? Oh, we hear you now. What's going on? There are some really good changes. Can you hear me? Yep, we hear you. There are some changes to the grant program statutorily since the last round. The speed threshold is now 100 by 20, which I think is important. So, and also, and the way it was done before, you could have one provider providing gig service, but if you only had one provider providing gig service, you could still get a grant in the area. And that is no longer the case. And we're very happy about that because there shouldn't, subsidized dollars should not go to an area to overbuild someone. It should go to the areas that don't have any, that have need, that don't have the 100 by 20 grant. So we're very happy with that. And there's a challenge process in here, which I think is what you're seeing with these enforceable commitment locations is like, as you can demonstrate that you are going to build this and you've got your planning and this, like someone could do an application in an area where we have ARDOF, but we just have to demonstrate that we are in process to complete that ARDOF build. And that should hopefully be enough to sustain a challenge of a build. So we're happy to have that the challenge process is a little more fleshed out and a little bit more of a runway. We have 30 days to challenge, which we haven't always had that long in the past. So we appreciate that, too. Sorry about my connection issues.

No problem. Thank you very much for sharing your perspectives on that.

I think, you know, kind of talking through this and reading between the lines a little bit between the press releases that the PSC has put out, just to put it bluntly, I do think that in an ideal world, the PSC wants to see applications where there's SpaceX bead awards, you know, the low Earth orbit satellite awards, I think. Yeah. just to kind of cut straight to the point. I think that's what PSE is after. Whether they say that or not directly, that's different. But that's my read of the situation. And in Dane County specific, we do not have any SpaceX bead locations. The bead locations in Dane County are largely Bertram Communications. There's a little bit of Brightspeed as well. So... Yeah, I guess I'll just leave it there. Sometimes you got to do a little reading between the lines of some of these press releases and kind of the information that's out there. So I thought I may just try to go straight to the point on that one. But that's what I've got. So that was the extent of my updates for today.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Did anyone have any questions or anything to add with all that? Not a lot to chew on, and we'll stay tuned and see if we get any more early morning press releases. All right, well, thank you. That moves us on to E, presentations, and we have our ethics training, which will cover our committee. Each committee is required by a resolution of the county board to take this training, so I'll turn it over to Jaron to... Play the tape. Wonderful.

And I... Hopefully we don't have any issues with sound, but it should come through. Okay. If anyone has issues with sound on zoom in particular, if you could maybe raise your hand or, or, you know, virtually raised your hand or just find a way to let us know, that would be wonderful. And I'd also share that if we could, I know if people have to go, that's fine, but it'd be important that we maintain quorum throughout this as well. I think otherwise we, we may have to do it at a future meeting date. So I'll leave it at that. So.

The issue of ethics is always, unfortunately, never black and white. And it's going to require a lot of discussion, either internally with yourself, if it's something that you want to take on yourself, or if you have questions about what may be an ethical issue, reach out to me or someone else in my office. These questions can, you can tie yourself up in knots about them, but there's a kind of a quick test that I will show you at the end that should kind of help you guys kind of go through them as we proceed. But let's just go ahead and get started. So ethics, again, the purpose essentially has always been to prevent undue influence, self-dealing, and disappearance of impropriety. It's also help to help the public the constituents believe that they to have some confidence in what we're doing here right that the decisions are being made based upon what they want um what they've asked for you to sort of look out for rather than for something more uh provincial in your own interests um they the ethics ordinances that we have come from um state law and then we've also added additional ordinances ourselves they're straightforward but again modern day experiences really change how they apply to your specific case given all coming from different backgrounds different employers different connections in the community you know madison and the county area is not very large so there's going to be a lot of kind of crossover effect between your role here and your personal roles at home All right, who? So ethics rules apply to all county officials, that includes you as elected supervisors, as well as county employees. We're only gonna talk about those rules that apply to you though tonight. So what? In general, they seek to prevent the county officials from using your office or position for any personal gain. They try to prevent you to ignore, they want to prevent you from ignoring any conflicts of interest. and they wanna prevent you from being inappropriately influenced. All right, so Wisconsin Statute 1959 is the code of ethics for local government officials. These apply to everyone statewide if you're in a municipality. And the number one that falls underneath this is that you cannot use your office for private gain, right? The language here specifically says you can't use your office for personal financial gain or for anything of value, quote unquote, or for gain of your immediate family member or for an associated organization. That's state law. You cannot offer or receive anything of value, which means you can't solicit or accept from any person anything of value if it could reasonably be expected to influence a vote or an action. Our ordinance is has gone so far to define what it means to be anything of value. And essentially it breaks down to something, anything at all, that has a value of $13 and above or $39 yearly. So the bar is extremely low, right? And so this goes back to kind of we talked about originally, actually Supervisor Eicher kind of brought up this idea of disclosures, right? This idea of it's better safe than sorry to make sure that if you do feel like there's something of value out there that you just recognize it as such and you take the action that's required. You also, cannot take action on a matter which you have a financial interest, right? So you can't take, you can't vote or take any official action if you or your immediate family member and affiliate organization has a substantial financial interest in the matter. We define substantial financial interest as anything that you have to disclose in your disclosure forms when you have filed them to county clerk's office. You cannot use your office to create a substantial benefit for yourself or your immediate family or an organization you're associated with. Immediate family means a spouse or domestic partner or any relative who receives half more of your financial support from the officer that's in question or provides half or more support. And then associated with an organization is actually somewhat limited. It just means you, it implies to you or your immediate family that serves as a director, trustee, or controls at least 10% of a business's equity, or if you serve as an authorized representative. So that's one of those rare situations where your membership in an organization isn't necessarily going to be triggered as something as you being associated with under the statute, as long as you're not a board member, a director, or someone that's authorized representative in it. cannot take action on a matter which you have a financial interest. So if you're faced with this, you must not, A, participate in any discussion, deliberation, or vote, and you have to ask to be recorded as abstaining. What often gets missed when there is, when an elected official realizes there is a conflict, they believe that, well, I'm gonna go ahead and abstain. But before they do so, they're jumping in and talking about the matter, you know, and putting their two cents in, and that's not really what the statute contemplates. The statute requires, it contemplates someone making a decision, okay, I have a conflict here, I need to sort of step back and not get involved. But you have to do that from the beginning. You can't just assume that your abstention is in and of itself sufficient to avoid any potential ethical conflicts. We're gonna shift to now our Dane County chapter nine. It's local ethics code and incorporates what we just talked about under statute. But it also adds a few other things. We've added a few years ago a requirement under Ethics Code to prohibit elected officials from engaging in sexual harassment or discrimination on a various basis. Interesting quirk that many organizations have is that those sexual harassment policies, those policies that prohibit sexual harassment, the laws that prohibit kind of discrimination, the organizations tend to focus the application of those, the implementation of those on employees, and often forget that elected officials don't really have a direct connection to it. So in order to remedy that a few years ago, we actually added that as part of the ethics code for county officials. YOU CANNOT USE OR DISCLOSE INFORMATION THAT YOU GAINED IN THE COURSE OF YOUR SERVICE UNLESS IT'S ALREADY IN THE PUBLIC RECORD, IF IT'S GOING TO SOMEHOW RESULT IN YOU GAINING SOMETHING OF VALUE. AGAIN, MORE THAN $13. You cannot use your office for influence or gain. You know, this is very common through a lot of ethics codes throughout the country that's kind of sometimes called the don't you know who I am rule, you know, that someone's going out there saying, you know, I think you're going to want to do this for me because I'm a very important supervisor on the county board. So that's unlikely perhaps, but it is something that a lot of jurisdictions have adopted. YOU CANNOT USE, THIS SOMETIMES COMES UP, YOU CANNOT USE ANY COUNTY PROPERTY FOR EITHER PARTISAN OR NONPARTISAN POLITICAL ACTIVITY UNLESS THAT PROPERTY IS AVAILABLE TO ANYONE ELSE IN THE PUBLIC. THERE IS NOT A SPECIFIC LIST OF PROPERTY THAT WE HAVE IN OUR ORDINANCES, BUT IT IS, THERE IS A LIST OF PROPERTY WE HAVE IN OUR ORDINANCES, BUT IT'S NOT INCLUSIVE. SOMETIMES WHAT COMES UP IS THE USE OF EMAIL, LIKE COUNTIES PROVIDED EMAIL FOR PARTISAN OR NONPARTISAN ACTIVITY. that tends to be an issue sometimes and that should be avoided because that would be considered a county resource. Anything that you can access because of your role as a supervisor is a county resource. Section 928 deals with a kind of specialized situation with supervisors who happen to represent private interests before a county entity. If anyone falls in that camp, please reach out to me individually. I can sort of guide you through it. Our audience has kind of acknowledged that that might be a possibility, and there are certain exceptions where we could sort of investigate to see whether or not you can take advantage of to still sort of meet your private responsibilities, but also not run afoul of the ethics code. This is sometimes called as log rolling. You cannot trade your vote for or against an item for the vote of another supervisor on a different item or for a modification to an ordinance amendment or resolution or in exchange for a veto or non-veto of an item by the county executive. Similarly, you cannot accept anything of value like fees or expenses for an activity unless you can demonstrate the activity is not related to the use of county time or materials and that there's no relationship to your office. That second one is, the big exception to that one are actual and reasonable speaker fees, like honorariums. Our ordinances recognize that in many ways those kind of assist the county, those are for the county's benefit, not necessarily for your own personal benefit. There's also an exception in our ordinances to reflect that certain political committees regulated by Chapter 11 can provide such fees to you. You may not accept anything of value which consists of transportation, lodging, meals, food, or beverage, or reimbursement. But again, you can accept these items if you can show that it was received primarily for the benefit of the county, like I mentioned, A good example or a good sort of category of those exceptions would be if you were to receive the benefit, if it would actually prevent the county from paying the expense instead. So a good example would be if someone were to say, we want you to attend a conference, we're gonna make sure your meals are paid at that conference. The county has a per diem that they would have to pay otherwise so often our employees kind of take advantage of that, so that the county itself doesn't have to pay out for the per diems that would be permitted under the ethics code. there's also a an exception here for payments from political committees kind of similar to when we just discussed. Now disclosures. Section 9.36 explains the requirements you must follow if you receive anything of value and how to disclose. I will tell you that the process is somewhat wonky. It requires you, if you decide, I think there's a provision there that says if you decide to keep it, you need to submit the value of whatever the thing of value was to the treasurer's office, and the treasurer's office then needs to keep a record of it. And my editorial statement of that is it just looks bad. So really consider whether or not it's worth taking advantage of that process and talk to me or someone from my office if you are considering that. The in-county ordinance is 9.60, 9.61 deals with the statements of economic interests, which I think many of you have already completed. And then this last one is in red, because I wasn't sure that the body was going to adopt the changes we just made to disclosure. So we're going to go to breaking news here, thanks to all of you. and spend a little bit more time about this new ordinance that everyone has passed. I'm gonna read it just kind of, I don't wanna bore everyone, but I think it's helpful just to sort of read it out loud and then give anyone a chance to sort of ask questions about it. I will be up front and say this is new to us as well. oftentimes these ethics rules we get a good sense as to how they're going to be applied after some unfortunate first issues come up um so but i want to sort of be able to sort of address any kind of generalized questions tonight and then sort of focus my research afterwards if there are some questions that we should kind of look into after after we discuss them today so as we mentioned before so section one deals just with disclosures Right and it's basically in your case as a supervisor who has or whose immediate family member has a substantial financial interest right let's take that separately. That one we've already discussed right that's anything that you've already kind of disclosed in your economic interest. or a personal interest, we've also discussed this, that could be anything above a modicum of a contact between a business, political association, family member, whatever. So it's really low bar. That in a matter pending before you, right, then this ordinance requires you to disclose it. And again, and I really, I can't stress this enough, I think the practice should be better safe than sorry, right? Because even if it's not a real story, the failure to disclose might make it a story, and it's better just to disclose it if you can. I know as this gets kicked in, once this kicks in, and many of you are gonna have questions about it, because we haven't had to do this before, I'm happy to discuss those with you offline, and if there is some kind of general guidance that comes from those discussions, I will provide it to the board. Number two deals with abstentions. And as we talked about before, this one requires kind of a higher bar, a higher level of inquiry for members of the body. So the county official shall abstain from discussing, deliberating, and voting on the matter under consideration if they or an immediate family member has a substantial financial interest, again, we know what that is, or a personal interest, but here's the qualifier, right? Both of those, or either of those, I should say, need to be to the extent as judged by you as a supervisor, and again, if you have questions, please reach out to me or someone from my office, that those interests you believe conflicts or appears to conflict with your official duties or would impair or reasonably expected to impair their independence of judgment or actions. Again, this is a brand new rule. I invite anyone that feels if there's something like in the agenda that's coming up for your first meeting after this one that you feel, hey, this might be something that I need to abstain on, please contact our office. Quite frankly, these discussions have been occurring for many years with me. A lot of members kind of reach out because of their employment or they just want to make sure what should I do here. So I'm happy to answer those questions moving forward. I WILL INVITE QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS, I GUESS. BUT LET'S MOVE ON. BUT PLEASE WRITE THEM DOWN IF YOU HAVE ANY. OKAY. NO PRIVATE INTEREST IN PUBLIC CONTRACTS. SO OUR ORDINANCES SAY YOU CANNOT PARTICIPATE IN THE MAKING OF A CONTRACT IN YOUR CAPACITY AS A BOARD MEMBER IF YOU HAVE A DIRECT OR INDIRECT FINANCIAL INTEREST IN THE CONTRACT. SO ESSENTIALLY, IF YOU HAVE ANY any skin in the game about a resolution that authorizes a contract, then you should abstain from voting on it. Now, the flip side of this one is a little bit more complicated. However, you cannot, in your private capacity, negotiate, bid, or enter into a contract with which you have a direct or indirect financial interest if you are authorized or required by law to participate in your public capacity in the making of the contract. So the example that comes to mind is one that was written in an AG opinion many years ago where there was a town member, I believe, who was a member of a committee that ultimately would vote on recommending whether or not land should be purchased. This town member owned some land that the town was interested in purchasing. This town member negotiated with the agency or not even agency like the member of the of the town board that was kind of in charge of kind of uh soliciting and acquiring that land then when the deal came up before the committee that he was in he abstained he thought he was fine by doing that this statute which is a criminal actual family statute does prohibits you from doing that so the way i try to think about it is is that whereas the one previously comes into place when you just happen to see a contract that you have some direct or financial interest in, you can abstain and step away, because that is affecting you and your public capacity and your official capacity. What you can't do, though, is be the initiator of the negotiations or engage in those negotiations at all. And if you do, by the time that contract comes back to you as part of your official duties, it's too late. You've already committed the felony violation, honestly. you know, I don't, I can tell you that this is probably a criminal statute hasn't been used in many, many years, but it is puts, it will put you at risk. Um, so my big takeaway here is if you have something that you want to negotiate with the County, um, you, you should really think whether or not that is something you want to pursue because the minute you start negotiating, if it ends up coming back to you, the violation might have already occurred. And again, if this ever is a possibility, please, please, please reach out to me. I am happy to go into a lot of discussion, a lot of inquiry with it about it. My office is here to sort of assist you with all of these. There are other prohibitions that other state laws come into play too, which is one is you cannot be employed or appointed to a new position or an office that was created during your term in office. So if seems unlikely given our budget circuit constraints but if we were to create positions in the 2027 budget and you thought to yourself I really would I wouldn't mind doing X for the county you would not be eligible to apply for that position and hold that position under state law this other one is it that's another federal sorry criminal statute you cannot intentionally fail or refuse to perform a known mandatory non-discretionary duty within the required time period. You cannot take any action that you know is forbidden by law to do in an official capacity, and you cannot either act or by omission exercise discretionary power inconsistent with the duties of the office in order to obtain a dishonest advantage. That language is... kind of broad. And again, it will it will have to be a situation where we look at what the circumstances are. And then we kind of go over that statute together to see whether or not it applies to your specific case. But it's essentially trying to prohibit the misconduct in office and it goes required sort of investigation to your intention as to why you took action or you didn't take action. So it's really fact intensive as well. So I imagine all of you are sitting back saying like, I've heard a lot of words being thrown at me and I still don't know what to do if something were to come up. And that is a fair, fair criticism. There are a few things that I can try to point to you to sort of guide you a little bit, at least in your initial inquiry. One is, what's the nature of the decision that you're about to vote on? The reason why that's important is if you are going to make a decision that's a little bit more quasi-judicial, one where you're applying a specific set of facts to whether or not you're going to take an action, that's a bigger deal. That's a situation where I think you should really reach out to our office sooner rather than later, and so we can discuss it, because there is more of a possibility that's going to be an ethical issue for you. Ask yourself, does the matter involve a public contract in which I have a direct or indirect financial interest? Again, err on the side of being careful. Reach out to our office. We're happy to answer those questions. And then simply, does the action affect myself, a member of my family, or an organization with which my family member or I are associated? Again, all of these, in many cases, if any of these are yes, that I think should inspire you, unless you're confident in your decision to reach out to our office to have a discussion about it. Now, I promised you there is one piece of practical advice that I've always told people, and it's this one. Does it pass a smell test? Would you be comfortable if you were to imagine maybe a political operative or maybe a political candidate you don't necessarily care for doing what you're contemplating doing and reading about it in the paper? If it makes you feel like, well, I'm not sure if I would like that person, or consequently I'm not sure if I want people to know I did X if that were to come out, that's the trigger to sort of follow. That's your decision right there. That's your decision to abstain. That's your decision to avoid any further discussions about that matter. And at a minimum, that's your decision to reach out to our office. Again, key thing here is we are here to help. We can provide confidential advice for you. Otherwise, the Dane County Ethics Board can handle complaints and they can also provide an advisory opinion to you as well.

All right. So there's our ethics training. If anyone has any questions of ethical dilemma, we do have Corp Council who is able to answer those. Or if you need help getting in touch with them, I suppose just work with Jaron and we can... get through that before we have to make a decision in a meeting. But I think our group is likely not going to have too many things that come up, but now you know. So thank you for the video and for checking that off of our list for today. Barring any other questions on that, we'll move on to item F, future meeting items and dates. Our next regularly scheduled meeting would be the first Wednesday of August, which is the 5th at 9 a.m. I guess... Hopefully, the majority of us, I think we're on the last term, but if you're not able to make that meeting, I guess let Jaron know that. But if we have a quorum that day, that would be our next meeting. Is there any registrants for public comment? No. No comment on items on the agenda. Is there any other such business as allowed by law? Hearing none brings us to aye.

I motion to adjourn.

All right. I have a motion to adjourn by Udell. All in favor of adjournment, say aye. Aye. And any opposed? No opposed. So we are adjourned at 9.52. Thank you, everyone, and we'll see you in August.