County to hire outside consultant, counsel to aid HSC transition

The Oneida County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last week to retain outside counsel and to hire an outside consultant to aid in the transition of delivery of services from the soon-to-be-defunct Human Service Center to a newly created county human services department.

The board voted to allocate $200,000 for a consultant’s services and to request that its other Human Service Center (HSC) partners, Vilas and Forest counties, pay a proportionate share. 

The contract will be let by Oneida County and cost-sharing would be billed back monthly.

The board allocated $25,000 for legal counsel.

The funds for the consultant will come from the HSC’s contingency fund budgeted by each county.  

The funds for the legal counsel will come from the HSC contingency budgeted by Oneida County and/or corporation counsel vacancy dollars.

The complexity of the transition, as well as some personnel gaps, moved the county’s executive committee to recommend the temporary positions. 

According to the resolution presented to the board, the close-out of an institution with multi-million dollar state and federal funding reporting obligations, with 50 or more employee and benefit year-end statements and filings, and with significant client and vendor relationships, not to mention other fiscal matters, requires the assistance of a consultant to study, plan, and assist in the close-out of the HSC “books” leading up to and following December 31 of this year.

The $200,000-contract will begin in July 2024 and conclude on or before April 2025.

Oneida County finance director Tina Smigielski, in coordination with her Vilas and Forest county counterparts, will locate an appropriate consultant and prepare a contract for services. Oneida County is requesting that the funding be shared with the other counties based on the current cost-sharing formula. That cost-sharing would break down to $108,000 for Oneida County; $62,000 for Vilas County; and $30,000 for Forest County. 

According to Smigielski, there is sufficient funding set aside in the human service transition contingency account.

In a June 5 memo to county board chairman Scott Holewinski, Smigielski said much of the work will need to be done leading up to and after December 31. The HSC finance director submitted his resignation, Smigielski wrote, completing his employment at the end of June.

“Even if their finance director had not resigned, there will be a need,” Smigielski told the board Tuesday. “Whenever an organization, whether it’s private sector or public sector, closes, there’s a need for a close-out audit. Things like issuances of W-2s and 1099s, and all those kinds of regulatory items that are required in the organization.”

Because of those needs, Smigielski said she and her counterparts in Vilas and Forest counties agreed that it would be appropriate to hire someone externally to do those types of functions. 

Those officials will be interviewing qualified candidates provided by a consulting firm in June. The firm is a recruitment, consulting, and interim staffing service firm for the public and nonprofit sectors.

Smigielski said they were interviewing two retired finance directors, both of whom now live in Florida, though they have Wisconsin roots. 

“And that would be through temps, which specializes in placing retired police chiefs, finance directors, HR directors, that kind of thing,” she said. “So this person would quarterback, kind of helping get us to year end now that the HSC finance director resigned.”

But Smigielski said the consultant was about more than filling a vacancy short-term.

“But then it’s also making sure all of the close-out things are done appropriately within the regulations,” she said. “And that we don’t have any kind of items that come up a year or two later, that we failed to file some kind of audit or something like that. So the three counties did have funding set aside for this, and this would come out of that contingency amount that is set aside.”

If retained, the consultant would work in concert with the finance director up until the end of the month and then assume fiscal oversight of the agency under the supervision of the finance directors of Oneida and Vilas counties, and the county clerk at Forest County. 

The goal is to have a consultant in place as soon as possible, Smigielski said.

Outside counsel

According to the resolution calling for outside counsel, “the counties have a vested interest in ensuring that the transition to the Oneida County Human Services Department providing human services to Forest and Vilas counties comports with applicable state and federal statutes and regulations.”

The transition may involve unanticipated legal issues that require input from legal counsels relative to health care entities, the resolution stated, further declaring that the county transition oversight panel and acting HSC director shall determine what counsel is necessary and will hire the appropriate counsel.

Another factor driving the need for outside counsel is that a position in the county corporation counsel’s office is vacant.

“I think we’re all aware our corporation counsel is down a full-time position,” supervisor Billy Fried, the chairman of the county’s executive committee, said. “A lot of questions are coming up and being asked of the transition committee. I think the executive committee wanted to make sure that all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted correctly so that nothing comes back to bite us as a county.”

Fried said the initial recommendation to hire outside counsel revolved around the labor situation, but then there were more questions about contracts and other issues and so the executive committee expanded it to allow the county to go outside for legal counsel that specializes in some of those things. 

Corporation counsel Mike Fugle said his office was already pressed.

“Now there’s a number of questions regarding HIPAA (privacy statutes), regarding access for various county employees to the Human Service Center,” Fugle said. “There are medical records that the Human Service Center maintains. And so in discussing this at the public safety committee, I indicated that, being down one staff member, I didn’t have time to get to everything.”

For instance, Fugle continued, for children in need of protection or services cases, the county had 31 cases last year.

“We filed 26 already this year,” he said. “So those numbers are going up. We’ve got TPRs (termination of parental rights) and other things that are happening. And the discussion really was, this is kind of like a package. This is one contained unit that has a definitive end date, which it would make sense to have specialized counsel, people who know medical records, people who know HIPAA, people who understand retiree health savings accounts, to step in and take on that so that it doesn’t continue with me reprioritizing things to the bottom.”

Fugle said he had a jury trial this month for a TPR. 

“So it’d be good to have this off my plate, then hopefully I can stay current with the rest of things,” he said.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.