Just Another Week:

When the Trempealeau County Board of Supervisors adjourned its monthly meeting last week Monday, no taxpayer could’ve known the status of the county administrator. That is a clear gap that should be corrected in the future. 

I don’t question if the closed session was legal. It was properly posted saying the board would be discussing the job performance and contract of the county administrator. That is certainly a conversation that should be held behind closed doors. The problem is that when the board reconvened in open session, it made it known that there was action, but gave no indication about what that action was.

The board’s open session vote was to reaffirm the action it took in closed session. What does that mean? The general public could not possibly know. 

I had to reach out to the county attorney and express my disappointment with that decision — along with my doubts on whether voting on such a topic in closed session was legal. Ultimately, it might be legal in a courtroom, but certainly doesn’t hold up in the court of public opinion.

I gathered that the county still employs an administrator and is likely negotiating a new contract with her. Rebecca Glewen’s current agreement expires in June and part of it includes terms that the two sides would begin negotiating a new contract well before then. 

But, shouldn’t that be made public? If the county board is so happy with its administrator that it wants to keep her on for longer, they should want to advertise that. And county board members who may not be satisfied shouldn’t have to hide their votes. 

The county attorney, Susan Fisher, argued that making the vote public would “directly disregard the need for a closed session.” I don’t buy that and I asked her four separate times how that would violate the sanctity of the closed session and never received a response. Certainly, a vote in open session could have been vague enough to prevent any details about the negotiation from being public. 

To be clear, I’m not arguing for or against the administrator or the job she has done. Merely the county board should be transparent. 

What struck me as really strange, though, is that I found this to be a somewhat common occurrence at the county level. 

I’m sure readers of this space recall what went down with former Trempealeau County Clerk of Courts Kari Tidquist. The county board and committees met several times to discuss issues with the clerk of courts department and, ultimately, voted to try to have Tidquist removed from office.

My problem with the process is that none of those discussions or votes were public. Didn’t the nearly 9,000 people who voted to put Tidquist in office have a right to know that other elected officials were trying to remove her? And why they were trying to do so?

The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Open Meeting Compliance Guide explicitly states that the board can not meet in closed session to discuss elected officials. Furthermore, I didn’t see any closed session in which Tidquist’s name or title were listed on the agenda. Agenda items are supposed to be likely to apprise members of the public and media, according to the Attorney General. As for the action, you guessed it, all in closed session. None of the people who voted for Tidquist could argue on her behalf because they could not have known what was happening. 

I tend to agree with Tidquist’s attorney Jaclyn Kallie that the process was an “offense against our democratic system.” 

There are enough county supervisors that at least one of them should realize that voting in closed session is a disservice to the public.