Last night the county board met to fill the positions of 1st Vice Chair and 2nd Vice chair. Who won the elections?
Here’s the meeting if you want to follow along, you have to go 45 minutes into the one hour long meeting to get to the elections.
BACKGROUND
If you recall, on Thursday, January 23rd, Sharon Corrigan abruptly resigned as the chair of the Dane County Board. (press release) She made the announcement that she was resigning effective the next day. On Friday, January 24th, she was appointed by County Executive Joe Parisi to run the Alliant Energy Center. (press release) That made Supervisor Paul Nelson, who is not running for re-election, the new Chair of the County Board. That also made Analeise Eicher the Vice Chair and left an opening in the second vice chair position.
That lasted a couple days and by January 27th, Paul Nelson also resigned. This made Analeise Eicher the Chair of the Dane County Board. (press release) And it left vacancies for the Vice Chair and the 2nd Vice chair.
Last night the county board agenda had these two items
B. Special Matters and announcements
4. Election of First Vice-Chair
5. Election of Second Vice-Chair
COUNTY BOARD CHAIR IS ONLY FULL TIME POSITION
The County Board Chair is a full-time position. It is the only Supervisor position that gets paid as a full time position. In October, they gave themselves raises again. The County Board chair has had the following pay increased:
- 2017 – $37,000
- 2018 – $50,000
- 2019 – $50,750
- 2020 – $51,500
- 2021 – $53,045
Meanwhile, the other 36 county board supervisors get paid:
- 2017 – $8,200
- 2018 – $10,550
- 2019 – $10,750
- 2020 – $10,900
- 2021 – $11, 227
SO, WHO GOT ELECTED LAST NIGHT?
Election of 1st Vice-Chair
Andrew Schauer nominates Paul Rusk. He has no comments.
Chuck Erickson nominates Paul Nelson. Erickson indicates that since he has experience it would be good to utilize that for a couple more months.
There are no other nominations.
Staff distributes paper ballots.
Patrick Downing asks if it would be appropriate to hear a few words from each of the candidates.
Analiese Eicher says “sure, if they would like to, you are more than welcome to say a few words, especially since we are going through a process of writing things down. Do either of you wish to say anything?”
Nelson says he realized that it might be a little bit difficult to make and unassailable case for being asked to resume the position of first vice chair. But here he’s stands so he’ll give it a try. One of the duties of the first vice-chair is to serve in the Executive Committee and recently the Executive Committee has started taking up the work of starting the wheels going on a redistricting process, a process that the board approved in 2016 and he found it a very interesting and fulfilling process that he really enjoys and he thinks this is something that he would like to continue to do in his last two months on the board, so he asks for their consideration.
Rusk says this is a little bit of a surprise to him, it was not what he was expecting was going to happen tonight. He says that they have transition for the next couple of months and he has been on the board a long time, so he would use his skills the best he can during the period of transition and then after the elections in April we will review this process again. So thank you.
Staff collects the ballots. (Off camera you can hear Eicher say “what the hell do we do in the mean time?” Sounds like McDonell says “just chill out”. She says “great.” Whispering and laughing continues . . . )
Eicher asks if anyone still has a “piece of paper” that needs collecting. Jokes, laughing.
Waiting.
County Clerk Scott McDonell asks if every one installed the app for this vote? Groans, laughing.
More waiting.
Some asks something, she says you can do whatever you want while we are voting but she isn’t going to formally recess. She suggests they take a walk, jog around, maybe do some calisthenics in the back.
More waiting.
More whispering, Eicher says “like if I die, but I won’t.” presumably making jokes about what happens if she doesn’t make it to the end of her term.
More waiting.
“Either way, this is going to be a Paul, so we do have that.” says Eicher.
You can then hear McDonell saying “Nelson”
Eicher then announces the clerk has tallied and Paul Nelson is our new vice-chair. Old, new, first vice-chair. Congratulations Supervisor Nelson.
Elections of Second Vice-Chair
Supervisor Jamie Kuhn nominates Liz Doyle and the reason she is doing that is Liz has been, since she got on the board, been more than willing to step up into leadership positions, spent a lot of time the last couple of months working on the sub-committee on mental health funding, the CJ Tubbs fund and she is going to do great things for this county and for the county board and she thinks it is a great time for her to step into this role.
McDonell tells her to ask for a motion to cast a unanimous ballot.
Someone says “so moved”, Eicher says “great”. She asks for a second and someone must have seconded and they she asks if anyone is opposed? No one says anthing and she announces “Awesome, unanimous ballot, congratulations”
There seems to be confusion, but you can hear McDonell say “I’m going with Levin, McCarville on that one.” and Eicher says “great.”
Eicher, says congratulations to Supervisor Doyle.
Clapping.
WHAT ELSE HAPPENED AT THE COUNTY BOARD LAST NIGHT?
The meeting was only about an hour. 45 minutes was all the honoring resolutions. 2019 Middleton High School Boys Cross Country Team, Black History Month and Certificates for County Employees that have been there 25 years.
Jamie Kuhn announces that she is looking to honor Sharon Corrigan in some way. This is Sharon’s strong reaction.
She then moves behind the pole so she can’t be seen on camera.
They approve payments, the minutes, the consent agenda, zoning petitions, and the rest of the agenda with no further discussion. And then they adjourn.
