Dodge County Board Of Supervisors Approve A New Spending Policy

Dodge County Board of Supervisors met on March 19, 2024, to pass a motion authorizing a county administration policy for the purchase of equipment and supplies.

All voting, the motion passed 20 to 10. The new policy was previously referred to as the rule of 30 in the Rules of Order Governing the County Board of Supervisors. This topic was being addressed because of some of the supervisors’ beliefs that approval for spending above the budgeted amount of equipment and supplies should remain with the board of supervisors as a rule, while some believe it should be given to administrators and department heads as a policy.

County Board Chairman David Frohling said he previously suggested the rule be removed from the rules of order because it is an operational item and should be dictated in a policy rather than included as a rule.

“My effort was to provide language that would suffice for a comfort level for this body that would allow this – the whole topic of purchase of equipment – to rest in a policy rather than in county board rules,” said Frohling.

County Board Supervisor Jeff A. Breselow did not agree with supporting the policy and thinks it is unsafe. Breselow said, “it is giving the control of the purse strings to the administrator, or to the department heads.”

He also said, “We as an elected body have a duty to diligently watch the purse strings. This is not doing that.” Breselow  said he sees the disarray in the finance department between the administrators and the highway department. “None of these folks can seem to communicate one with the other.”

Breselow said he’d be much in favor of keeping the rule of 30, or perhaps tweaking it.

“All this new policy does is to tell the board after-the-fact…after it already happened,” said Breselow. “We’ve had way too much that happened last session that came to us after-the-fact. I am not in support of this at all. I am perfectly comfortable with the limits and levels we have that exist in rule 30.”

County Board Supervisor Jeffery Caine said, “The problem with rule of 30 is the cost of equipment and supplies have gotten so expensive that we would virtually be coming back to the county board for approval.”

County Board Supervisor Lisa Derr agreed with supporting the policy and said she doesn’t think it is a good use of the board’s time to manage the budget when they could be focusing on something else.

“If there is something that is urgently needed that cost $8,200, when we have a $300 plus million-dollar budget, we should not be discussing whether this money should be paid or not,” said Derr. “It is the administrator’s job to manage the budget. That is his actual job, it’s in the description. It’s not our role – that’s what department heads do.  I hope we can adopt this policy.”

Supervisor Randy VandeZande agreed with Breselow, saying, “this takes from our control of budgeted items.” VandeZande  referred to a time when an emergency management vehicle (EMV) was purchased  for over the $50,000 budget.  It was considered budgeted because it was a footnote on a Capital Investment Plan. (C.I.P.) presented to the board.

“According to this now, we would have no control over that purchase,” said VandeZande. “And the fact that they changed the emergency purchases and amended it…there was already an existing procurement policy that did not qualify that EMV as an emergency purchase. The way this is written now, we could not have stopped that. So, I’m against it.”

With 30 district supervisors voting, the majority of them decided to approve the motion to make the equipment and supply budget for Dodge County an administrative policy issue rather than a rule that the board would have to vote on when money is desired to be spent. Once the board sets the budget, the department heads should be able to spend the money according to the policies set.

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