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This is the Civic Media Spotlight.
Hello and welcome to the first hour of the Civic Media Spotlight.
We begin with Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
Brian and Jamie are joined by Bill Looters, the president of Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
He shares information about the loophole recently brought to light.
that allows lawmakers to delete records that should be publicly accessible through open record requests.
Thank you so much for joining us this morning on the Civic Media Network.
A beautiful start to your Thursday if you're listening in Richland Center on WRCE or in La Crosse on WLCX or even Wisconsin Rapids on WFHR.
Thank you so much for being here today.
My name is Jamie Martinson.
And good morning.
I'm Brian Noonan.
If you are a public employee in Wisconsin, you're required to maintain records to comply with the state's open records law.
This might surprise you though, there is a group that is exempt from that law and it ironically is the people who write the laws.
A loophole in the law allows Wisconsin lawmakers to delete public records.
If that sounds a little fishy to you, join the club.
So how did this law come into existence?
Should we be concerned about how it's been used?
And does the new bill brought forth by Democrats have a chance of passing?
Bill Leaders, President at Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council joins us to answer those questions.
Bill, thanks for being here.
We appreciate your time.
To help everybody fully understand this loophole,
Can you first explain the open records law and the history of this particular exemption?
Sure.
Back in early 1980s, the state updated and passed the current version of the public records or open records law.
Basically, our law says that any document in the possession of any state or local public agency or official is presumptively open.
It's presumed that you can ask for it and receive it.
But you only can release and receive
release information that you have and there's a separate statute that deals with records retention rules and that statute exempts members of the legislature and their staffs from the record retention rules that are in place for
everybody else.
So if you are the street superintendent of Oshkosh and you get a letter about a crack sidewalk, you are obligated to hold on to that record for a statutory period of time, generally seven years.
But if you're a lawmaker and you get an email from a lobbyist saying, you know, you vote this way and I'll get some money to your campaign, you can say, boy, that would look bad if that came out and delete it.
Wow.
Wow.
Now, I don't know that it's been used for that, but what it has been used for over the years, particularly in the last decade after it became better known that this exemption existed, is that lawmakers delete correspondence that weighs in on legislation they propose.
So I'll give you an example.
It's about a decade ago.
Wisconsin
ended its government accountability board, broke it up from being a nonpartisan agency to being two bipartisan agencies that were subject to staffed with political appointees.
And at the time, some citizens made records requests for the feedback that the lawmakers who proposed this change were receiving.
And it turned out like 95% of the people who wrote them.
And there was quite a few people who wrote them about this.
So that was a bad idea.
We don't want that.
Please don't do this.
But they did it anyway.
So you can see a situation like that.
It would save them some embarrassment if when you ask for records, they don't have to turn over records that show that they ignored the overwhelming amount of input they received.
They can just say, oh, we didn't keep that record.
We're not required to keep it.
So Bill, what does this actually mean for, you know, say, regular people, the constituents of our lawmakers who are trying to understand what their elected officials are doing?
Does this get into transparency and trust for a lot of people?
Oh yeah, I mean this is a law that could lead and probably already has led to abuse if not actual corruption because you can erase all records of the records that you've received that other government officials would have to provide on request.
You can destroy at will.
Now there is a feature of our open records law that once a person requests a record
you can't destroy it.
I mean, once there's a pending records request, even though you might have been able to destroy it beforehand, you can't destroy it anymore.
So that's a nice feature of our law that when somebody makes a request, if you haven't already thought about getting rid of it, you can't do it now.
Bill, have there been attempts in the past to close this loophole?
Yes, legislative attempts represented, excuse me, Senator.
Chris Larsen, a Democrat from Milwaukee, has introduced legislation to end this exemption session after session.
There's a new bill that was just introduced by Representative Clinton Anderson, a Democrat from Beloit, which would accomplish the same thing.
And Senator Larsen is aligned with Representative Anderson on the reintroduction of this bill.
We're talking with Bill Leaders this morning.
He is the president at Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, NFOIC.org, if you want to check them out and get more information.
Do most people realize-
It's WF.
WF,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Thank you for that correction.
You can guess Google Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
Perfect, perfect.
Do most people, Bill, realize that this loophole exists or is this something that's sort of flying under the radar?
Well, there was a story this week.
This is Sunshine Week, a national observance of transparency and open government.
And a lot of media outlets take this opportunity to write a story about some feature or problem with our transparency laws.
And Peter Cameron of the Badger Project wrote a piece that ran under Wisconsin Watch about this particular exemption just raised as an issue.
So more people know about it now, presumably, because of that story.
Overall, I don't think it's very well known that this exemption exists when we first became aware
of it a little bit more in a decade ago, we tried not to call any attention to it for a while because we knew that most lawmakers didn't realize that they had this ability and we didn't want to give them any ideas, but sooner or later it became clear that, eventually it became clear that they had caught into it already and so we could actively criticize the fact that they had this freedom to destroy records.
Is this type of loophole bill unique to Wisconsin?
Is it just a state thing?
Does it exist on the federal level?
Are we seeing this everywhere?
No, I think there are other states that do restrict access to lawmakers' records.
In fact, there's 12 states overall that won't allow any access.
They completely exempt the legislature from all records laws, not just correspondence, but everything.
In fact, Congress does that too.
Congress, the US Senate, they are not required to provide access to the correspondence that they send and receive.
They're categorically exempt from the Federal Freedom of Information Act.
And as I said, some states have exemptions for all records.
Some states have exemptions for what's called deliberative process records.
By that, it means whatever goes into the deliberations and the creation of legislation, the back and forth,
should we
say this, should we say this, should we include this, should we not include this, would be exempt from disclosure.
in certain states.
In 2015, the Wisconsin legislature tried to pass an exemption for deliberative process materials for itself and some other government entities, and there was a big backlash at the time, and they had to withdraw that proposal.
It died in the light of overwhelming public scorn.
As I'm sitting here thinking about this, and I'm thinking about your career as a journalist and all the journalists who are trying to do their jobs throughout the state, how is this actually affecting them trying to do their jobs and hold lawmakers accountable and get the actual story sometimes of what's happening?
Well, I think you can get to something substantive in saying that
The lawmaker said that he did not retain any records regarding this issue.
You know, to point out that a lawmaker may have exercised this authority to destroy records is probably more damning than anything the records contain.
So I think reporters should ask for records and if they're not provided and you have reason to believe that they exist and they were not provided because they were destroyed to make
public issue of that.
That's not a best practice approach to governance.
Bill Leaders is our guest.
He's president at Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council WFOIC.org is their website.
Bill, it sounds like if you're going into politics for the right reason, this shouldn't be an issue.
But we've talked about the attempts before and the current bill that is coming to the Senate floor.
Who is opposing this?
on the state level.
Is it just straight partisan?
And what reasons are they giving for pushing back against this change?
You're going to
hate this, but
I don't know.
I'm not aware specifically of who is registered for or against this newly introduced legislation.
It's probably something that isn't going to get a lot of public positions taking that.
It will just not come up for a vote.
It's very unlikely that this will pass previous incarnations of a bill to end the lawmaker's exemption from the retention laws have failed.
They've not even had hearings.
I don't think it's going anywhere, and I don't think anyone's going to make a big fuss and beat their chest and say, this is why we don't want it to go anywhere.
They're just going to let it quietly die.
Wow.
So what can we do?
Well, like I say, journalists should continue to make requests for records.
Here's something that we thought, and in fact, we did a column on this, your right to know column, which on our website is you can request
lawmakers deleted emails.
I mean, they don't go away when you hit delete.
They go into a queue where they're retrievable.
You as a reporter or a citizen can make a records request for the emails they deleted, and you can see what they're getting rid of.
So that's a way to short circuit their ability.
Another thing you could do, although I don't know that anyone has done this, is to make a daily request for all of the emails that they receive and send.
Because once you make that request, they can't destroy it anymore.
So every morning at eight o'clock, you're automatically sending out a record request to the head of the, you know, finance committee or whatnot for all of the record, all of the emails sent and received that day.
How is this connecting to some of the bigger concerns about things like, about influence?
You know, you think of lobbyists, you think about the special interests and going back to the public's right to know.
Yeah, well, one of the...
ways that I have used records request with regard to legislation is to get the temperature of response.
Like there was a bill that tightened drunk driving laws and I went and I saw the enormous amount of
public response to that proposal most in favor of tightening our laws and people told heartbreaking stories of how drunk drivers had killed people that they knew and loved and wounded people they knew and loved added a dimension to the story you know to see the real people respond to a legislative proposal that was going to change the terrain in terms of how drunk driving is treated.
Bill we've got about a minute and a half left in your experience
Are most legislators pretty responsive to a records request or most offices or how long does it usually take for a journalist to get things or the public to get things that they've requested?
It depends.
I mean, if a luminous request may take a while, a simple request may be answered very, very soon.
I think by and large, most public officials in Wisconsin and even most legislators are mindful of their responsibility to provide records on request.
There are records that they still do provide on a routine basis.
There's nothing that stops them from providing all of the records that people request.
There's nothing that requires them to delete records that they don't want seen.
So, yeah, by and large,
I think there's a good deal of support among lawmakers and other public officials for the idea of transparency.
It's one of the tools they have to build trust with the people that they represent.
I know very, very quickly, can you, well, I guess, never mind.
Parker's giving me the wrap-up music.
I was gonna talk about some other exemptions, but Parker's keeping me on task here.
We're gonna have to bring you back at some point to talk about some of the other things that legislatures can do in these exemptions.
Bill Leaders is our guest this morning.
He is the president at Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Bill.
Very informative stuff.
It is 8.19 right now.
Thank you.
You are listening to Daybreak.
My name is Jamie Martinson.
And I'm Brian Noon.
And this
is the Civic Media Network.
In a reminder to read beyond the headlines, we look at the story that Governor Tony Evers vetoed in a child care bill that on the surface level looked good.
As Brian and Jamie dive into the story, they learn why Evers vetoed the bill and even agrees with his decision.
622 right now.
We hope that your morning is going well so far.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Hey, Brian, don't forget that we've got another chance for everybody to qualify for some really great cash in prizes coming up in less than an hour with our multi-state text-to-win contest.
This is the portion of the morning where we remind you to get your Civic Media app downloaded in case
you don't
already have it because that's the only way that you can qualify for a daily prize of $200 or that grand prize, which is that Verlo match.
Queen mattress set over $1,300 value, so not bad.
Right.
You get the sheets.
You get the mattress pad.
You get some pillows.
You get the whole deal.
And we've already given away two days worth of cash.
So strap in.
We're doing this for two weeks.
So
it
should be fun.
And then the grand prize winner will be announced.
Plenty of chances to qualify throughout each and every day.
And the beauty of it is you can enter every single time you want throughout the day using your civic media.
Oh,
is that right?
Yeah.
We have no limits on how many times you can
enter.
So I noticed.
Yesterday, there were a couple people who actually entered the same hour twice or three times.
I've noticed that too, and I
wondered if that was
legit.
No, yes, that's totally legit.
It's like a
Chicago election.
Vote early, vote often.
Come on in, and we'll, you know,
good luck.
Absolutely.
Good luck to you.
Yeah, the more, listen, if you're just sitting around all day and you have access to your
phone and
your app, just listen for, because the word changes throughout the day.
and listen for the new word, enter up, and there you go.
I
love it.
So this is another, please, we must always read past the headlines.
If you take nothing away from this show, it's read past the headline, the headline, Governor Evers vetoes a bill that would extend tax credits
for childcare, for businesses dealing with childcare.
And you're like, ooh, why would he do something that evil?
And then you go, oh, wait a minute, I'm gonna read the second paragraph.
Damn that Tony Evers.
Yeah, it turns out you gotta read a little bit.
Well, I gotta side with the governor on this because for...
forever we've always talked about pork being jammed into all these bills right
oh there's
always there's always something that tries to get snuck in and so the governor looked at this bill uh it was a catchall rule that would allow businesses to claim tax credits for just about any any exp just about any expense
tied
to child care and the governor said hold on that seems a little broad to me and it could lead to a lot of fraud and abuse which
And we know never happens with government funding.
Everybody's
above board, straight up.
So we vetoed it.
Just go talk to Tim Walls if you want to know how that works out in
Minnesota.
Maybe Tony called Tim.
Listen, what's
going
on?
I know you're having a little trouble with that daycare stuff.
What do you think of
this one?
Oh,
no, it was just
like, no, save yourself the headache.
I don't always want to know how many of those conversations happen in private, honestly.
Right?
Anyway, but yeah.
I think this is an interesting case, though, because another issue with this particular bill is it didn't actually include any funding for the actual oversight either.
So
the
Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation or WEDC would be responsible for monitoring it without any extra resources.
And the proposal came as the state is, as a lot of families know, already dealing with a childcare crisis, right?
There
is rising costs for the families, providers are struggling to stay open, trying to accommodate the rules, the regulations, all of the increases that they're going through.
There's also limited access to really great facilities across the state.
And the ones that do have, if you do happen to find a really great center, I know there's also a lot of people who end up on a really long waiting list because of problems with access.
The governor had previously supported a more targeted change when it came to childcare, allowing businesses to invest in third party childcare programs or even loan funds.
He called that approach more strategic and responsible.
The original tax credit, which goes back to 2023 covered 15%
of childcare facility investments, had no businesses, and had no businesses actually take advantage of it, which is kind of crazy, right?
Childcare providers criticize- Yeah, but
not really.
I mean, we're talking about existing companies, right?
Not
people going into the childcare business, but if-
Say Civic Media wanted to open a daycare center, just for Parker and the other young technical producers so they could have juice boxes and roll around.
I would love some juice boxes.
And nap time, yes.
And
then we'd have to hire a cumle young daycare worker to take care of the boys and swallow
them
when they're crying.
Then we've invented something completely different in whatever is happening.
But either way, nobody's taking advantage.
We can get 15% for the investment.
But nobody's taking them up on that.
I understand.
It's a hassle because as a business, you're taking on not only the cost involved, but another liability.
And I understand its benefits to the employees.
100% right then you can always squeeze a couple more minutes out of your employees because they don't
have to
leave because they know Oh pick up is only a couple steps away instead of across town and I've got
to
get you know the cut so
But
you also have to have the space, you know, you have to have the space, you have to accommodate if it is a childcare facility, there's lots of rules and regulations that you have to adhere to through the state.
So I do understand.
15% still leaves, let me do the minute, 85%
that you have to pay yourself.
A big gap, let's put it like that.
But
in
this particular case, childcare providers criticized this bill that the governor vetoed saying it wouldn't solve any real issues like costs or staffing shortages.
And you know, if you're wondering,
how it even made it to the governor's desk with all of this pushback, it passed mostly along party lines.
Republicans support it, Democrats opposed it, most of them anyway.
And Evers says this bill really just tried to expand too much too quickly without any safeguards.
So he wants a more focused, funded solution that actually addresses the childcare crisis that we have in this particular state.
I mean, no matter how you look at it,
our entire system, and I think this, it doesn't just apply to Wisconsin, but I think a lot of states across the board need a completely revamped system of how we do childcare, right?
It's gotta be better for families, and it's gotta be better for the childcare providers.
There has to be some win-win in there somewhere, right?
I want my childcare providers to be able to live on their wage, so they're a little happier coming to work.
Instead of working for minimum wage.
Which is a whole different topic.
And doing it
for the love of the game.
Whole different topic.
We gotta go.
This is Daybreak at the Civic Media Network.
There you go, Parker.
Next up on the Civic Media Spotlight, we have Lean Local with Jim Schmidt.
Jim talks to Jim Ritterbush.
Jim currently serves on the City Council, specifically District
8.
former Green Bay mayor Jim Schmidt.
All right welcome everyone to another episode of Lean Local and this is the show where we do what we say in the title we lean into the local community and these last couple weeks and for the next couple weeks we've really been focused on the local candidates here in Greater Green Bay as I've told you many times you know comes through a presidential election or governor's election you know there's lines but
People just, I don't know if people realize how important the local government is.
I mean, these are the people who are to pick up the garbage, they take care of the parks, they fund the police department, the fire department, and when you look at your tax bill, it's real, and where's that money going?
That's why I thought we'd take it upon ourselves here at Lean Local to really lean into the candidates.
Let's get to know them.
They're working hard.
I'm going to tell you, I did that for over 20 years, knocking on doors, but not everybody's home and send literature and they use it for kindling.
want to get them in here and the things that they say well you know other media picks it up but they don't have the time for this and they don't have a half hour to sit down and just really talk to someone that you may or may not know and as you know on the scene with the city council election coming up
This is all April 7th, as well as the County Board.
And that's as local as you can get.
So that's what we want to bring these candidates in.
And today, in studio, we have with us Jim Ritterbush.
And you may know that name.
He serves on the City Council presently, and this is District 8.
That's what I thought.
District eight, and we're gonna talk a little bit about district eight, some of their issues, and then we'll talk about the city issues as well, but before we do that, I'm welcome.
I'm glad you're here.
Glad to be with you.
All right, and so tell me, like, did you have a bug for this, or why are you running?
Of course you're on the council, but maybe you want to explain to the listeners how you got out on the council first of all, because it's you.
I've actually ran this the third, mostly actually the fourth time I've run.
I ran
twice against guys in law.
I'm kind of a guy who really want to be on City Council.
I've taken on 40 year incumbents, 20 year incumbents, and I'm willing to put the work in.
So I started to get involved in government through our neighborhood associations.
I've been president of the Market Park Neighborhood Association for about 16 years.
I've also been vice chair of roommate neighborhoods for the last, I believe, six years.
So when you get involved with neighborhoods, you kind of know what our citizens want.
I'm also one of the board of directors for the United Way.
So through that organization also you learn to what the needs are of our citizens in Green Bay.
That's great.
And so you ran unsuccessfully and that's one of the reasons you talk about these 20 year people.
We have term limits now.
So you're there for 12 years.
I happen to be a big advocate of that.
But you can always come back and run again after you take a little bit of a break So it's not like you can never run for politics again, but you yeah, he had the opportunity on The older men who was in office stepped aside and then you applied it was a different wasn't really an election as much
as a Three people applied myself mark Anderson and Megan Bouchart and it was a ranked choice system So basically all the alderman we gave our speeches are
Sales pitch to the council and they selected the person the first person that got six So once was the one that got selected and I was fortunate enough to be that person and I've been serving since June and I'm really liking it.
I'm still learning a lot I mean you get phone calls and you got to sort through what's you know reality what you can do what you can't do So
let's talk about that because you really didn't do a lot of campaigning in the public eye
when you were appointed by the city council voted in by the city council but now you are and there's a difference and like what are you hearing at the doors are we hearing on the phone well
like you like conversation before it's nice when people answer their door because you might knock 50 doors and you're lucky if you get six people that answer the door but um people know who i am because i've been very active in the community through all the different uh you know neighborhood associations united way so people know who i am i'm on council they recognize my name
Yeah, I did get to campaign for this position, but I've campaigned three times before.
So I feel I've put the work in now.
I put the
work in.
I don't know that I would I was saying that asking the was on when you talk to people are there things that you see common thread on their concerns.
Are you the roads?
Everybody wants to talk about roads.
There's not enough money to fix the roads.
I'm housing.
Some people have issues with some of the parks around their area, which I happen to be on the parks committee.
So I can help.
facilitate some of those issues that they may have.
All right.
And,
yeah, roads, a little bit to do with our weather, but there's other communities that are in the same climate that have better roads than us.
When you get, when you get rain and freeze and rain and freeze, you're going to have
bad roads.
Yeah.
It's just the Wisconsin thing, but unfortunately our
state government hasn't has kind of taken away some of the money the revenue to help right fix that so that's where the shortfall
and some people is still complaining to me and of course they did for but some of the roads aren't in the city you know everything's because all the suburbs call themselves Green Bay you know so there may be something in in al away um like maybe all the avenue that's that's their roller coaster you know
611 is the state highway right
We're waiting for them to fix it, but then I come to like 2032 or something.
So
now we're going to go through and resurface part of it to try to.
I think that's a really good
idea.
Survive till they do redo
anything.
Yeah.
So if you look at the city right now from your view, what do you see as the top like two or three issues facing us over the next, let's say four
or five years?
Well, housing.
I mean, we need to find housing.
We want to build a population.
We need places for people to live, which would be multi-family and duplexes, houses.
JBS is prime example of a housing project that I was actually part of.
I was kind of a facilitator as the labor rep for the workers at JBS.
And it was kind of cool to be part of that.
But we need more of those kind of things in our community.
So housing...
So there's people who want to live in Green Bay, but there's no housing.
Is that what you're telling me?
It's just a shortage, yeah.
You run out of space.
I mean, you run out of space just like all the way.
It's pretty much landlocked.
There's really no parcels there to build.
Well, Al athlete four square miles.
Yeah, they don't.
Yeah, they're totally part of the reason why the alleyway wants to take over where the prison's at.
Yeah.
They want to build some housing and retailers.
And then they say, well, we can't grow out.
We're going to grow up.
But
That's difficult too, these high rises and do they really fit?
But Green Bay's got 50 square miles and we do have some elbow room here.
Yeah, I mean there's
places to build but we just actually passed the council to try to get rid of some of the red tape to build certain kind of houses.
That's good.
Because there were so many restrictions on what you can build and where you can build that we changed a couple ordinances to help.
be able to build houses, different sizes and shapes and heights.
And then you did some things on zoning.
I didn't follow as closely as I should have, but where you live, your district, the district you represent, has some packer houses as they call them and some rentals.
And that's been going back and forth.
And I think some people wanted some, well, you tell me, I mean, didn't some people want those to be non-rentals?
Yeah, there was a thing that went through the Equal Rights Commission.
They felt that because of people buying
houses for short-term rentals that it's kind of ruining the stock of housing in Green Bay, which when we really sat down and looked at it, it's about 1% of the households in Green Bay that are short-term rentals.
That was my first hot topic in office and I learned a lot about it.
I had people calling me from all over the country wanting me to support them, but I have to support them, but I also have to think of the residents who live there.
And I do think about that because they're the ones that are my constituents.
So it was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.
But I think we had through City Council, we had a really good dialogue on how to take care of that by putting an ordinance.
There's always been ordinances, but unfortunately our city hasn't been following them.
I mean policing.
The people who live next to these short term rentals, they have to report things.
If there's no report, it doesn't get documented and they don't get checked out.
Now we have a mechanism where it's gonna work a little bit better to have citizens
Report things and it gets documented and if if they're bad actors, they're gonna lose their license
Do you think that's I mean that is that a Band-Aid or is that Are we fixing it wasn't there a time?
I don't see that I'm asking I'm asking about the answer Where that was just gonna be zoned more commercial, you know, I feel bad I've got calls from the guy who's got two kids and doesn't want to live next to
an empty house, but doesn't want to live next to a party house either.
And he's going back and forth.
And is this where I should be to raise my kids?
And you got to be honest with these guys and say, I don't think so.
You know, I think, you know, play football in the backyard with the neighbors.
That ain't going to happen with you.
Well, there's
in those areas, there's not a lot of kids going to school there because they're all rentals.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
That is an issue.
But unfortunately, the state is the one that mandates a lot of the laws on short term rentals.
So the city's kind of got their hands tied until they open the laws up where cities can take more control of it.
All right.
So we talked about the roads and the housing.
Those are like the two main issues that you see the future.
Anything else that you ask everybody the same question?
I'm just curious, Jim.
Well, some
people
say crime.
I myself don't think we're very bad.
I think our crime has gone down drastically over the years.
Like I said, I've lived my whole life.
Yeah.
You know, I grew up in the same house I live in right now.
I lived in my house for 51 years.
So I know the Marquette Park area, like the back of my hand.
And, you know, I know neighbor ladies talk about how bad the crime is in there.
She's afraid to get on walk at night.
And I'm just like, I don't see that.
You know, I didn't see that at all.
That's a very personal thing though, right?
I mean, if you, even while I live in, I think they're all great neighborhoods in Green Bay, but, you know, cars broken into and.
Yeah, you're gonna have
to have riffraff no matter where
you are.
But then I think crime's up significantly because it's never happened in 10 years, you know what I mean?
So I think you gotta kind of weigh that a little bit, but yeah, crime is a personal thing, but yeah, I think Green Bay, compared to some bigger cities, is doing much better, but I mean, yeah, it's just, you always gotta keep that as one of your top priorities.
Absolutely.
And I want to keep the city safe.
I have kids and grandkids, and you always want...
Want to be safe and you want to be able to be proud of where you live and your crime rates low Yeah, that you know, that's a good place to live.
Absolutely.
That's But we've done plenty of surveys on why do you move to a community and everyone says it's because of the job It really isn't I mean there's a lot of people who move because of the environment in not weather environment and I'm talking about environment of crime educational opportunities quality of life issues, so
Let me, while we're on like neighborhoods and I don't want to tie it to crime, but there's a homeless problem in Green Bay.
That's obvious.
You might say obvious, not, it's obvious because it's visible.
Yep.
Yep.
I know you drive by St.
John's Park and you see lots of people hurtled, huddled up in blankets and yeah, it's a hard solution to fix.
I know any W shelters building some housing for
for that to help alleviate that.
I think we need a little bit more of that in our city.
You know, we need to get partners together to build.
Yeah.
And St.
John's, you let people sleep in parks overnight and that's against the law.
And as I called one of our alderman who used to be a cop, he was over, we're kind of looking the other way.
I don't think that's...
Good because I said to him why don't you look the other way when you give me a speeding ticket?
You
know, yeah, they just need to come up with more more places for people to go year-round Not just certain times of the year.
Yeah, I think you've heard
my comments on that.
Mm-hmm.
I think what hospitals?
Closes after six months, right?
I mean if you're in the business, you got to take care of the people
so yeah,
this is
get them on their feet and Hopefully get them to be successful and they
can be
I think people have to believe that those people can be successful and it's going to take, but it takes the government to step in on this thing, not throw money at it, step in and coordinate things.
And you're doing, you're on the right track with that.
We got to go to a quick break here, Jim, but I just want to talk a little bit when we get on him.
Just things of all about working on the city council, you know, and how it works, because that's a different environment.
Yeah.
I kind of look at it like it's the same thing as I do in the job every day.
I'm troubleshooting.
Yeah, right.
All right.
We're going to be right back.
We're here with Jim Ritterbush, a candidate for District 8 in the city of
Green Bay.
Yeah.
Stick around.
All right, welcome back everyone to lean local and we're in-house guest we have with us is Jim Ritterbush It's kind of refreshing to talk to people who've lived here their whole life and you live in the same house So I think you kind of know the city Being a good neighbor, you know United Way some of those things but being on the council is different you're one of 12 people and
whether you're a new person or been on there 40 years, you have the same vote.
And I think people need to understand that, that it's you're just as powerful, but it means just as much no matter how long you've served or since you got on.
But we had a guy on the council in one of my terms that had really good ideas, but they never got through.
I want to talk to you about how you build consensus because you need that.
You need to get five or six people to get this thing over the goal line.
I mean, it can be the greatest idea.
You go to the committee and they might like it, but the council has a lot of power in the city.
And tell me about relationships, building consensus, that whole area of government.
Well, I mean,
you once you get on council, you get to know who you're working with.
You get to know kind of who's supportive of your ideas and not supportive of your ideas.
And you just strategize and negotiate with one another to, you know, accomplish the goals of, you know, things for everybody, not just the select few, you know, and it's, it's sometimes it's kind of tough because you'll have people that, you know, they don't have any faith in the ideas that you may have.
And you got to talk to these people and, you know, it's kind of like negotiating, you know, you got to give and take, you're not going to get everything, you're not going to get everything, but you got to negotiate with one another
and make it work.
And as long as you stay professional and respectful, that's the key.
I mean, we had some people that would judge the idea by the person who presented it.
And that's just so wrong, right?
But I learned quickly to have somebody else present the idea if it was something I thought that they would not like about me.
Yeah, you work with other
council members
and you
sign on to an idea and you say, what do you think of this?
Would you put your name there?
Absolutely.
It's a better for all.
I'm a people person, man.
I believe in...
helping all people, not just the select people.
So engaging with the council, you said you can know them a little bit better and kind of build it, whatever, one, two at a time.
Tell me about the engagement with the constituents.
Like how do you engage with the constituents?
And you know, there's, I get someone who, the only time I hear from them is election time.
And that's not right.
I mean, you're getting paid, not a lot, but you're getting paid.
And I think you have a real responsibility
to communicate, not so much educate, but I looked at his, like I have newsletters and things, I thought they were educational.
Tell me about your constituent
relationship.
Well, ever since I've been involved in neighborhood associations, to be honest with you, I, and being vice chair of Green Bay Neighborhoods, I go to all the different neighborhood associations in my jurisdiction in District 8, and I participate in them, and I, I'm there to, is there all the men I'm there, and I'm also there as their,
I'm always out in the community.
I'm doing things all the time for the different neighborhoods, from my own neighborhood to the United Way, diaper drive or blanket drive, whatever it may be.
I'm out there being seen.
And I know I was kind of frustrated that my older men, I never seen them anywhere in the city.
I mean, when there's music downtown, I'm there.
When there's, you know, things going on around the parks or, you know, you look on Facebook and you find an event, you're like,
Hey, I'm gonna go there.
So did you know your constituents are there?
If they got questions, you're there for them.
You gotta be seen.
You
can't just hide in your house.
And you gotta be approachable.
That's really important that people come up in the, sometimes when they're yelling at me after church, I don't like, but most people were very kind and I always wanted to be like you, very approachable.
I think it's really important.
You gotta be out there.
You gotta be transparent.
You gotta be seen.
And like I say, unfortunately my alderman, I used to say to him,
Where are you?
I never see you anywhere.
Yeah, that's an important part.
Tell me about the next, what do you want to see in economic development?
I know you're on the Parks Commission, but there's the Redevelopment Authority, there's the Planning Commission, and I'm sure you attend some of those meetings, but what do you seem to do with
economic development?
I'd like to see, unfortunately, our neighbors here are building all kinds of
residential living spaces.
And I would like to see our city view the model what our neighbors are doing.
I mean, it just seems like there's housing going up everywhere, apartment complexes, big ones everywhere.
But unfortunately, not in Green Bay as much.
I mean, I know we do have some that are going in on Broadway, which took way too long to get done.
But that's what I'd like to see is more
you know, more flexibility with economic development to get rid of some of the red tape so that developers can come in here and be successful and the city be successful on top of that.
Helps them a lot that they can call that Green Bay though.
Yep.
I mean, because I have some friends from Sheboygan that's just like, you know, I'm living in Green Bay now and they're like, that's awesome, where are you living?
And sure enough, it's, you know, they're living in the neighborhood, but all right, Jim, we gotta, this one quick.
Tell our ear listeners how they can get in touch with you.
I know you're all publicly I'm talking about you know,
I have a Facebook page of friends of Jim Ritterbush.
That's a way you can I have several email addresses, but I guess I'll give you the Jim dot Ritterbush Dot or G Green Bay dot Wisconsin dot gov, whatever.
Okay, right.
Yeah, I got it.
That's the city.
It's on the city
website.
Okay.
That's the address or I have a Ritterbush
4d8 at gmail.com.
That's also a way that's one with a campaign one.
Yep.
Otherwise I everything's on the website my full I use my home phone number We have an answer machine if I'm not there leave a message and I return all phone calls and some of them are kind of What do I do with this?
But if I don't know I go to other council members and yeah, that's them.
Hey, how do you handle that?
Yeah, that's
good.
I mean you're learning but
Even after 20 years, you're still learning.
Yeah, that's just the way good government works, and that's great.
Well, all right, this will be interesting.
Let's remind our voters that the election is April 7th, and of course polls are 7 in the morning till 8 in the evening.
And it's also early voting now.
So, you just go down to City Hall and it's so easy as people are so friendly down there.
My wife wrote what's early.
I'm old fashioned, I gotta stand in line.
I usually go early.
My
wife actually works the polls at City Hall.
Oh, why?
Cool.
Yeah, she works.
But yeah, get out of vote for me.
I really want to put another two years into this council for sure and build our city and make it.
Keep it number one.
All
right.
Well, yeah, thanks for doing what you're doing.
We need good government to make this city work.
All right.
Well, thanks for joining us here on Lean Local.
We'll be back next Sunday with another episode with more older people on board.
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