MONTHLY BREAKFAST OFFERS MORE THAN GOOD FOOD

Legislative breakfast with county supervisors, county department heads, and state legislators has a long and rich tradition in Sheboygan County. This once-a-month gathering began somewhere back in the 1960s and allows county supervisors, committee chairmen, county corporation counsel, and county department leaders to raise questions about issues affecting Sheboygan County now or that may affect it in the near future. This gathering has saved the county many hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years and has allowed the county to help address and often modify proposed state rules and regulations early in the rulemaking process.

This breakfast meeting takes place at the Sheboygan YMCA at 8 a.m. on the second Monday of each month, except during the summer months if the legislature is not in session. After a pledge to the flag, area legislators provide an overview of actions they think might be of interest that took place in Madison during the previous month. Then each county supervisor, countywide elected official, and county department head present is able to ask questions or point out some issue facing his/her committee or department. This system has been helpful to everyone.

During the month of May, we had Congressmen Petri visit. He was here, in part, to update Sheboygan County about the review process of the county’s $25 million federal non-motorized project in coordination with the cChairman of the Congressional Highway Committee. United State Senate staff will also show up on occasion; they report on upcoming national issues and are informed by the county officials about concerns they have.

Very few counties in Wisconsin regularly meet with their legislators. It certainly can be positive for the county to discuss government business with their legislators on a regular basis. They hear about local concerns, they become aware of them, and many times one legislator or county department head has information that another does not – that is most helpful to everyone. Most often they come to inform but sometimes they are known – as are county board supervisors and department heads – to stray a bit.

In this most recent meeting, my good friend Sen. Glen Grothman came a little late. So, at the end of the hour-long working breakfast meeting, he thought he would list some of his concerns on a number of issues he felt important and maybe even lecture on them (he is known to lecture from time to time). When his list of concerns reached environmentalists, he did seem to hesitate a little when he looked at me. While we didn’t get into a discussion on the issue, I did remind him that as an environmentalist I did like and enjoy clean water.

I could have emphasized that I also like clean air, don’t like gigantic ocean leaky oil wells, strongly support safe meat and vegetable food processing and keeping cows out of the rivers, appreciate wetlands, trees, grasses that control silt or other erosion runoff – as well as other worthwhile quality-of-life issues. But I didn’t go there because the goal of this long-standing breakfast group is to work together to solve issues affecting Sheboygan County, save taxpayers money, and in general make county and state government work smoother when possible. And, nice person he is, he didn’t dwell on the demerits of environmentalists. Keeping focused on working to make things better for both the county and state has been the long-term goal and strength of this breakfast gathering and this system continues to work well.

The group will again meet on the second Monday in June. At that meeting, unless there is a special reason, we will likely vote not to meet again until fall. Most area legislators will be running for office; that will be a politically charged period and not a good time for meeting.