Workers Bill of Rights, PFAS Updates and Jail Population Reduction

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Dear Neighbors,
It has a been a busy few weeks on the County Board. We passed a Workers Bill of Rights to strengthen our municipal labor force in Dane County, requested and eventually received multiple PFAS updates and are working on a resolution to reduce the number of Federal Residents housed at the Dane County Jail.

Workers Bill of Rights

The County Board passed 2022 OA-059, a Workers Bill of Rights, which reinforces our commitment to a productive partnership between management and employees. It will strengthen the meet and confer process, adds protections for gender identity, and provides for the democratic participation of workers in their workplace.

In order to deliver critical services to Dane County, we need to work hard to retain our experienced, professional and talented municipal workforce. Although other parts of the private and public sector have attempted to erode workers rights, Dane County strongly supports our public employees.

Big thanks to Board Chair Patrick Miles, Finance Chair Doyle, the employee groups, and management!

PFAS Updates

In October of 2022, the County Executive and Administration touted a pilot project that could potentially reduce over 90% of PFAS contamination in certain areas of the airport. Since the announcement, I was working hard to get the contractor and administration to present their data and findings to the public. After months of trying, I was able to secure a joint meeting with EANR and the airport commission with the caveat that questions could be submitted in writing. These questions would not be answered at the meeting but later answered in writing and posted to the airport web site. I will update you when the answers are posted.

There was optimism and concern surrounding the pilot that were outlined in this article:

https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/major-promise-big-questions-flow-from-a-pfas-cleanup-study-in-madison/

A high level overview of the technology is that is used microbes to consume the PFAS in a bioremediation process. Here is the presentation that was prevented:

https://dane.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11708497&GUID=6CC6FAE4-363E-4F83-AC27-54A74ED35EFE

Here are the questions that I asked that I am looking to get answered:

  • What is target area of the initial pilot project that produced 97% reduction?

  • Where has the pilot project been extended to?

  • How do the microbes actually break down the chemicals and does this process creates any unexpected issues?

  • How is the field study being controlled so that any unexpected byproducts don’t have a chance to escape?

  • Have the techniques used here to do remediation had any peer review done on them?

  • What data has been provided to the DNR on the current pilot and can we make that all available on the Dane County public PFAS website?

  • What is the total budget for the remediation pilot project, which government entities are involved and how is that being split up by the different agencies?

Big thanks to Supervisors Smith and Wright for their collaborative work on this!

We also received our PFAS quarterly update as per resolution 125 that I authored last year. That can be found here and I will provide more details on social media and in a future update about that quarterly update.

Reducing Jail Population by ending Federal Inmate Contract

Due to staffing and safety concerns, the Sheriff elected to transfer Dane County inmates to other counties such as Rock, Iowa and Oneida. Last summer, I worked with the Sheriff’s office to produce a daily jail census report. According to the current daily report, we transport 49 residents to other counties while we have 53 federal residents in transit. This is a snapshot of a single day but the numbers are roughly equivalent many days:

https://danesheriff.com/JailReportList

Of the federal residents in transit, approximately 30% of them are Dane County residents while virtually all of the residents housed at other counties jail facilities are Dane County residents.

It doesn’t make sense to continue to house Federal Residents In-Transit when we can’t even house Dane County residents in our jail facilities. We also are losing money on housing federal residents.

I am supporting resolution 2022-RES 393 to end this federal contract that was authored by Supervisor Wright. This is a sensible solution because even if a new jail is built, it will take years to complete. The issue of resident re-allocation will be not go away any time soon.

That concludes this update. Daylight savings time has really kicked my butt. I apologize for any poor grammar or typos. But I am enjoying a light extra light at the end of the day and hope you are too!