John Foust
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Jefferson Banner - Opinion John Foust |
Sifting through the JCEDC's garbage by In late January 2003, the County told me that some JCEDC records had been collected in an interesting fashion. Five boxes of material that had been collected by County employees from the trash found outside the JCEDC offices in the fall of 2002. In July I finally spent several hours reviewing the contents of the boxes. It's a mess - just as if former JCEDC executive director Marilyn Haroldson emptied cabinet after cabinet into a garbage can, and then someone boxed it up from there. Reports are separated, folders unloaded, piles mixed-up. It is terribly unfortunate that these five boxes of loose papers are all that remains from years of work and hundreds of thousands of tax dollars. I managed to segregate about three inches of somewhat interesting material, such as the results of JCEDC strategic planning sessions. I was unable to find any substantial amount of info about the operation of the corporation. I assume these records are still in Haroldson's possession. There were no minutes of board meetings, no financials, with one exception - the last meeting agenda was there. It showed they'd researched what they were supposed to do to dissolve the corporation, and understood that the assets were supposed to be passed on to the members of the corporation. Haroldson was instructed to compose an inventory. Most interesting from a historical perspective were the telephone messages. Several years of carbon-copy spiral-bound telephone message books were part of the haul. The sheer number of message books points out that Haroldson was often out of the office, contrary to the most common JCEDC claim for the necessity of having someone there to answer unexpected calls for information. They show the remarkable amount of communication between board members and the usual suspects before and after newspaper articles, committee meetings, etc. The JCEDC Board was well-aware of the issues and the risk of loss of funding, judging by these notes, and their intention to play dumb and hope for the best shines through. The phone messages confirmed the close collusion of the JCEDC with County Board members such as Pam Rogers, who often quickly updated Haroldson with the results of meetings concerning the JCEDC funding or requests for records. Among the messages from JCEDC Board members, only a small subset appear most often: Sheldon Mielke, John Givens, Chris Ott, Tim Nightingale and David Olsen. The phone records also show that Haroldson used the JCEDC office to handle issues related to her part-time side-job consultancy as the town planner for the Town of Merton, too. There were questionnaires from JCEDC strategic planning sessions, including one Board member who suggests that they should extend their Board membership to "informed citizens (without an agenda)". Somehow, this hand-written comment never made it to the typed summaries produced by County Extension Agent Steve Grabow, although every other comment did. Another letter from a Board member to Haroldson suggests that the JCEDC should market Jefferson County towards Illinois businesses who would prefer a more non-unionized climate. Some of what I found fills in a few blanks and confirms suspicions I'd had all along. The documents do show connections between Haroldson and the Johnson Creek development, the pipeline, bypasses, Wal-Mart, even ozone concerns. She also did a lot of work for the creation of the Workforce Development Center, and spent a lot of time on committees regarding human services. For example, there's a curious aerial photograph of the land just north of the Fort Atkinson airport, with a section of property marked "Wal-Mart". This was the very first location that Wal-Mart considered in our area. Who knew that the JCEDC was involved with this?
Why does Haroldson get to keep the computers and records?
I remain most curious about the databases and other files on the one or two computers owned by the JCEDC, as well as the rest of the paper records. I remain very disappointed that no one seems willing to pick up the phone and call Haroldson to demand these assets. I don't see this as flogging a dead horse. I see it as recovering information that will be useful to the new JCEDC. I asked for these records on November 7, 2002 before the JCEDC officially dissolved. I asked for these records in an e-mail sent January 9 to Haroldson, and carbon-copied to all e-mail-able participants in the County's economic development process. Records destroyed At the July 16, 2003 meeting of the newly formed Jefferson County Economic Development Consortium, County Supervisor Yvonne Duesterhoeft said that she'd spoken to former JCEDC executive director Marilyn Haroldson and was told that the computers from the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation had "been thrown out". This was news to me, and apparently it was news to members of the Consortium as well. I complained in this letter to several County officials. I also sent it to the Wisconsin Attorney General's office. On July 24, the Attorney General's office responded, asking for more information. I asked Supervisor Duesterhoeft for a written confirmation of the destruction in this letter. Why doesn't the DA want to hear about it? On July 29, District Attorney David Wambach responded to the carbon-copy of my July 16 letter regarding the destruction of these records: My immediate reply was quite simple: Why would a public official say "I will not read any correspondence from the public"? I try to clarify my position: Submitting open records complaints to the local District Attorney is described by statute. Surely you aren't saying that my open records complaints and supporting correspondence are "unwelcome and unwanted intrusions"? This is part of your official duties, no? |