I know that every business in our area is struggling to hire good people nowadays, but I feel I need to put out one more want ad in this already saturated market. Help Wanted: People actually interested in governance to get into local politics.
There are not that many open positions in local government–we tend to fill them every year in the spring elections–but the number of people filling those seats that are not interested in actual governance is growing. What was for centuries a process dedicated to budget approval and oversight, and the passage of enforceable ordinances and zoning policies, has become a constant stream of performative actions that lie far outside the realm of municipal government.
Because I watch local government meetings so you don’t have to, I can tell you that the Winnebago County Board’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee–which is responsible for oversight of the Sheriff’s Department, the County Clerk and the County Clerk of Courts spent the better part of three hours Monday night taking public comment and debating two resolutions that had nothing to do with any of those departments. One would declare Winnebago County a “sanctuary county” for the First Amendment to the Constitution. The other would declare Winnebago County a “sanctuary county” for the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
The First Amendment resolution would order the county not to spend any money to “restrict free speech”. Some of the debate focused on people’s “right to offend others”, some of the debate centered on allowing all forms of protest against the government, and some of the debate went back to the “safer at home” order during the early days of the pandemic that prevented churches from holding in-person services. It was those “church folk” that showed up at countless county board and city council meetings in 2020 opposing all forms of occupancy limits and face covering requirements–and were calling for the firing of the county Health Officer.
The Second Amendment resolution would put on record Winnebago County’s “opposition” to red flag laws–designed to restrict gun ownership for those with certain mental health histories, and those with pending criminal cases, usually involving domestic violence. It would also put on record Winnebago County’s “opposition” to gun buy-back programs that have been proposed as part of gun control laws–instead of straight up confiscation. Much of the debate on this measure focused on some supervisors’ belief that the Government knowing about your mental health issues is a HIPAA violation–while others predicted that women would claim domestic violence to take away the weapons owned by their spouses, exes, and significant others without due process.
While I usually cringe every time he is called upon to speak at any meeting, Supervisor Paul Eisen actually raised an important point in trying to have both measures pulled permanently. These resolutions are not the organic home-grown ideas of local residents looking to improve life in Winnebago County. Instead, they are boilerplate forms put together by third-party organizations or political parties themselves–spread widely through internet chat rooms and websites. Eisen even referred to news reports from other states like Tennessee and Florida where county boards had adopted the same resolutions with the same language.
Adding to the muddled mess of discussion was Corporation Counsel Mary Ann Mueller requesting several lines of these resolutions be struck because they contained oversight provisions not actually provided to the County Board. (She also weighed in on a resolution that would bar the county from accepting outside money for the administration of elections–questioning the accuracy of statements made about the 2020 election–which led to stammering responses about how Green Bay and some other cities passed this same measure and they likely did the fact-checking on it).
But no one summed up the uselessness of the proceedings better than Sheriff John Matz–who, when asked how these measures would impact his department, told the committee that it will have absolutely no impact, as his staff already enforce the laws and protect people’s rights. The sheriff also received a standing ovation from my home office when he boiled down the resolutions as being “just for show”.
Despite being told they were wasting their time, the committee approved the resolutions and sent them along to the full Winnebago County Board for who knows how many hours of debate and public comment in August–again, for a measure that will have no legal standing at all. Chairman Bryan Stafford even went so far as to say he would support “sanctuary county” resolutions for all of the Constitutional amendments if someone wanted to bring them forward.
And then last night, the Oshkosh Common Council decided they would spend 20-minutes grilling City Manager Mark Rohloff on why the recently-approved Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area–also known as the DORA (but better known as the “outdoor drinking district”)–never went to the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee before the Council voted on it. The Council liaison to that committee–Aaron Wojciechowski–appeared deeply upset that that body didn’t get a chance to “review the proposal for fairness”. It was pointed out that the DEI Committee wasn’t able to meet for two consecutive months because not enough members bothered to show up on the appointed dates–and that the Business Improvement District wanted the DORA to start this summer. Yet several other council members felt the need to call for delaying actual government business so that an advisory board with no jurisdiction could “weigh in”.
So if you are interested in returning local government to what it is supposed to be doing, I would highly encourage you to run. Nomination papers are available starting in December. It requires a little bit of leg work, the pay isn’t great, some of your new co-workers are going to be clowns, it could mean some late nights, and almost half the people you serve will complain about your work. But we desperately need you to get our local governments back on track. And if that happens at this level, maybe it can happen at the state and federal levels as well.
