Fugle out as Oneida County attorney

The controversial tenure of Michael Fugle as Oneida County corporation counsel is over, with the county attorney tendering an abrupt resignation this past Friday.

His last day with the county will be Wednesday, August 20.

County officials said they could not comment yet on the matter. The Lakeland Times has made a request for records related to Fugle’s resignation, but any release of documents will be delayed under the state’s so-called Woznicki rule, which requires records custodian to notify the subject of a records request and to allow a reasonable amount of time for that person to appeal the decision to release to circuit court.

However, on Friday, county clerk Tracy Hartman did confirm Fugle’s resignation and did release an email not subject to Woznicki  that was sent to county supervisors and department heads late Friday morning.

“Mike Fugle has submitted his resignation with his last day being Wednesday, August 20th,” Hartman wrote in the short email. “We wish Mike the best in his future endeavors.”

While there was no explanation given for the abrupt resignation — Fugle gave less than a week’s notice — the departure comes quickly on the heels of an August 5 scheduled joint meeting of the county’s executive and public safety committees, for which the meeting agenda listed a closed session to consider “employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which this body has jurisdiction or responsibility.”

The topic of that conversation was the corporation counsel.

That meeting followed a July 30 executive committee meeting in which the committee convened in closed session, in part, for a performance evaluation of the corporation counsel.

Controversial run

Fugle’s role as corporation counsel was not without controversy over the past several years.

A major controversy occurred in the summer of 2023, when, during a hearing on a Kirk Bangstad CUP application, Fugle interrupted the committee in the middle of taking a vote and advised that they shut things down because some unnamed group needed to use the room. 

The Oneida County Planning and Development Committee had voted 3-0 to revoke the administrative review permit for the Minocqua Brewing Company and appeared poised to deny the bid for a separate conditional use permit when Fugle abruptly advised the committee to adjourn the meeting. 

Specifically, after a motion had been made to deny the CUP application, committee chairman Scott Holewinski took the advice of Fugle not to hold the vote but to adjourn the session to the following August 9 meeting, ostensibly because it was 5 p.m. and another party had to use the room. 

In a complaint filed by the Times, publisher Gregg Walker alleged that a motion to adjourn a meeting to another date and time was out of order when another vote was being taken, according to the parliamentary rules of procedure the county code requires committees to use. Thus, Walker argued, violating those parliamentary procedures becomes a code violation.

Walker also alleged an open meetings violation, maintaining that the reconvened meeting was and had to be a continuation of the previous week’s public hearing and should have been noticed as such. That was not upheld, but both the sheriff’s office and the district attorney’s office agreed on the procedural violation. 

“After reviewing the complaint that was made by Walker and speaking with all those involved, it appears the rules of parliamentary procedure were not followed,” Oneida County detective sergeant Robert Hebein wrote in his open meetings investigation. “This report will be forwarded to the Oneida County District Attorney’s Office for review.”

In her response to the complaint, Pfeifer advised that breaking the parliamentary rules of procedure did not mean the open meetings law was violated, though she said she agreed with Hebein’s conclusion about parliamentary procedures.

“Accordingly, whether the rules of Parliamentary Rules of Procedure were followed during the August 2, 2023 Planning and Zoning meeting is beyond the scope of Open Meetings Law,” Pfeifer wrote in her response. “However, in analyzing whether a violation of Open Meetings Law occurred, I do believe the motion to adjourn the August 2, 2023 Planning and Zoning meeting could have been, and should have been, more clear, but the committee’s failure to make a clear record does not, in and of itself, change my analysis. Nor do I take issue with statement made in Detective Hebein’s report stating there was a violation of the rules of parliamentary procedure.”

Fugle’s tenure was also marred by an ongoing controversial practice by the county to route all open records requests — even to individual supervisors — through the corporation counsel’s office for review before release. At one time, that was commanded by county code, but the county changed the ordinance language from “shall” consult the corporation counsel on a records request to “may.”

However, while the code changed, the county’s practice did not, even though the corporation counsel has no legal jurisdiction over the records of county elected officials: By statute, elected officials are the custodians of their own records, while the corporation counsel is not the custodian of any records except his own and those of the corporation counsel’s office.

In addition, the corporation counsel represents the institutional interests of the county, not the interests of individual supervisors or of elected officials. Indeed, in a 1983 attorney general’s opinion involving Kenosha County, the attorney general pointed out the reality that conflicts of interest may exist between the corporation counsel’s position and that of elected supervisors.

Nonetheless, the practice continued throughout 2023. That year, after making a records request to then supervisor Anthony Rio, the newspaper filed an open records complaint after waiting 47 days without receiving the records and without being denied. Through emails obtained by the Times, the newspaper subsequently learned that the county’s IT office had sent Rio’s records to Fugle “for perusal.”

That prompted another ordinance change in early 2024, when the county board unanimously amended the public records provisions of the county code, striking language that injected the county corporation counsel into the process of responding to public records requests.

What comes next is unclear. The county could continue to follow tradition and begin recruiting a new corporation counsel. However, in the recent past, some supervisors have said they think the county should have no single corporation counsel but simply contract out work as needed to attorneys with specialized skills. As such, there could be a property rights attorney to handle zoning, another for guardianships, protective placements, child support, and children in need of protective services, and so on.

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