MADISON, Wis. — Despite the Dane County Executive’s office trying to distort the meaning of county ordinance 25.50, multiple county board proposals will go before the Health & Human Need Committee at 5:30 p.m. tonight to end the loopholes Human Services used to award contracts to Urban Triage in 2023.
Channel 3000 investigated and reported the county used a loophole to pass two contracts of $397,246 and $276,857 to Urban Triage for rapid rehousing and housing navigation without a vote of the full county board. The funds were a mix of county funds and funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act. Human services did this by splitting the contracts into two parts. The first part was lower than the $100,000 requiring a resolution, while the second was an addendum to take the contract up to the full amount. The first contracts and the addendums were worked on simultaneously.
The two ordinance proposals in committee tonight differ greatly from each other. A proposal put forth by Supervisors Jeff Weigand and Maureen McCarville would completely strip any special circumstances for Human Services contracts, forcing the contracts to be treated the same as any other county department contract.
A proposal from Supervisors David Peterson, Heidi Wegleitner, and Patrick Miles makes more subtle changes. It adds alerts to county board members about contracts, but still gives strong authority to the Human Services Director to award contracts…