Oneida County board votes to withdraw from Human Services Board

On a 19-2 vote, the Oneida County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday to give notice to withdraw from the current Tri-County Human Services Board effective as of December 31, 2024.

The human services board, which includes Forest and Vilas counties, oversees operations of the Human Service Center, which provides behavioral health services, assists law enforcement agencies in crisis situations and potential emergency detentions, as well as works with the social services department in various program areas.

Complaints about deficient services have persisted for years, and, in a presentation to the board Tuesday, Oneida County social services director Mary Rideout said the social services department supported the withdrawal resolution because, among other reasons, “attempts to address concerns or deficient service delivery have been made for decades with only temporary solutions.”

Oneida County sheriff Grady Hartman and several of his officers echoed those concerns.

“Our current system (of delivery of services) brings the Human Service Center into the mix, and ultimately that board was formed,” Hartman said. “I believe that is an antiquated system; 64 of the 72 counties are having that service done in-house through social services. There’s not a push to go to conglomerates now.”

Hartman said law enforcement, corporation counsels’ offices, and social services agencies must deal with the Human Service Center on a daily basis.

“We stand in solidarity that those services are not being provided in the best management that they could be,” he said. “That’s why we asked for the change.”

Representatives from Vilas and Forest counties did attend the meeting in support of the Oneida County withdrawal, including, among others, representatives from the Vilas and Forest counties’ corporation counsel office, as well as Vilas County social services and Vilas County law enforcement.

Hartman said his department and other agencies had tried to have discussions with the HSC for years to “meet in the middle” and spur change.

In her presentation, Rideout said the end of 2024 timeline would give the county time to explore options for a new structure for the delivery of those services, but she also emphasized that the services are statutorily mandated by the state and that all services the HSC now provides will continue, whatever structure is settled upon.

Representatives from HSC and from its board countered Tuesday that that those seeking to withdraw had not been transparent in their efforts and that to pass a withdrawal resolution without a plan in place to deliver the services was, in the words of one speaker, “lunacy.”

The resolution directs the county’s social services department, sheriff’s department, and corporation counsel’s office to convene meetings with their counterparts in Forest and Vilas counties, as well as with tribal representatives, to discuss a structure for the delivery of those services in the tri-county area and to bring a recommendation to the county board no later than next March.

A full story about the meeting will appear in Tuesday’s edition.