When a committee makes a recommendation, does it make a sound?

October 20, 2019 9:28 am

As a newly elected chair of a City Committee, I received no training. Meetings were only set up on my initiative. And, if I hadn’t been an alder for 8 years and look at legistar (city legislation tracking software) nearly every single day, I wouldn’t have realized that our recent recommendations don’t appear in legistar. And therefore, when Finance Committee votes on Monday, they don’t know what our committee did.

I think before we make any recommendations about the Structure of City Government, we first have to make the tools we have in place work, and be open and transparent in our processes. In my experience so far, it’s incredibly frustrating to have to ask for policing matters to be referred to the Public Safety Review Committee. And then, to have our recommendations not appear is even more frustrating. I knew this was going to be a challenge, but I didn’t know that even the simplest things were going to be so hard. Ok, maybe it did. But it shouldn’t be.

Here’s my email to all the powers that be . . .

from: Brenda Konkel <brendakonkel@gmail.com>to: Barbara McKinney <district1@cityofmadison.com>, Patrick Heck <pwheck@gmail.com>, Christian Albouras <christian.albouras@gmail.com>, “Rhodes-Conway, Satya V.” <SRhodes-Conway@cityofmadison.com>, Mike Verveer <district4@cityofmadison.com>, “Bidar-Sielaff, Shiva” <district5@cityofmadison.com>,
Steve King <district7@cityofmadison.com>, “Clear, Mark” <district19@cityofmadison.com>, Rebecca Kemble <district18@cityofmadison.com> (Steve King = Donna Moreland, Mark Clear = Keith Furman, my email address book needs to be updated)
cc: “Schmiedicke, David” <dSchmiedicke@cityofmadison.com>, “Veldran, Lisa” <lveldran@cityofmadison.com>, “Hardiman, Emily” <EHardiman@cityofmadison.com>, Kwasi <KObeng@cityofmadison.com>, “Witzel-Behl, Maribeth” <MWitzel-Behl@cityofmadison.com>
date: Oct 20, 2019, 9:12 AM
subject: Recommendation missing on Finance Committee agenda item

Dear Alders who serve on PSRC and Finance Committee members (staff cc’d):

In looking at item number 5 on the Finance Committee agenda (A resolution authorizing the Mayor and City Clerk to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Wisconsin -Madison to allow the UW Police Department to write certain citations as City of Madison ordinance violations to be processed in Madison Municipal Court.) it appears there are two errors in legistar:

1) It doesn’t reflect that this matter was referred to PSRC (however PSRC still appears to be in control of this item)

2) It doesn’t reflect our recommendation for an amendment to have the item come back to the PSRC after the pilot.

Our regular police department staff was not at our meeting and the fill-in staff didn’t know the various fine levels for a UW administrative ticket, the City of Madison Madison ticket and the State Charge/County Court process. However, we were told the fines would be lower through the city process. We are interested in knowing how discretion plays out, specifically by race. Who will be given which ticket when the police exercise discretion? We understood/were told that we couldn’t require the UW to give us reports by race, but we were going to informally request them. I personally believe this request could be put into the MOU.

The committee recommended an amendment for this matter to come back to PSRC because wanted to hear how the trial goes and see what impacts there might be in the community before this becomes permanent. This is the amendment that isn’t reflected in the Finance Committee materials in legistar.

Hopefully Alder McKinney or Verveer can make a motion to reflect our recommendation or staff can prepare a substitute?

Thanks everyone!

Brenda K. Konkel
Chair, Public Safety Review Committee