March COW

The County Board Committee of the Whole (what is this?) last night included a Special Meeting about leasing out part of the county nursing home, but the vote had to be delayed. Meeting notes below (jump to meeting notes). Summary from the News-Gazette:

County board puts off lease vote for nursing home, OKs plan to cover payroll
A vote on a proposed agreement to lease space at the Champaign County Nursing Home to Rosecrance Health Systems was postponed Tuesday over questions raised by the Illinois Department of Public Health, while county board members members gave tentative approval to a plan to use the county's general fund as a line of credit to cover nursing home payroll.

Board Chairman C. Pius Weibel said he hoped to bring the lease agreement back before the county board on March 27. As proposed, the county would lease to Rosecrance an unused wing at the nursing home for use as an inpatient drug therapy facility for about 24 patients at a time.

But nursing home officials received a letter from the Public Health Department late Monday afternoon raising questions about the agreement. County administrators didn't learn of the questions until Tuesday morning.

Also:

The measure to use the general fund to cover nursing home payroll was approved 12-6 at the board's regular committee-of-the-whole meeting, with all "no" votes coming from Republican members Jim McGuire, Jon Rector, Jack Anderson, Brad Clemmons, John Clifford and Stan Harper.

Weibel called the measure "a Band-Aid approach" that will make it easier for the county to cover payrolls, which average about $240,000 every two weeks.

Under the plan, county Auditor John Farney and county Administrator Deb Busey will pay bills submitted by vendors only during payroll weeks. After it's been determined that there is adequate revenue to cover payroll, accounts payable will be prioritized with any remaining funds.

Full article here.

Videos (Special Meeting video and COW video) at the County Clerk YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/champaigncountyclerk


Meeting Notes:

Special Meeting: 6pm at Brookens (agenda) began at 6:04pm

Prior to the Special Meeting Chairman Weibel informed me that the Special Meeting was going to be very brief as the one item on the agenda was delayed. At the meeting itself it was explained that the Illinois Department of Public Health notified them that another step was required to get approval to lease out part of the facility.

Member Petrie asked for further explanation of what the issues were. The IDPH had concerns about staff and management overlapping versus simply leasing out the property. She also raised concern about the medicaid beds and "overbedding" and whether this deal would cause problems for the Nursing Home's medicaid program. These questions are still being worked out with the IDPH and lawyers.

Member Harper wanted to make sure the broker and potential buyer for the Nursing Home were being kept in the loop. He was assured they are aware.

This item will be on the agenda two weeks from now. The Special Meeting adjourned at 6:13pm.


Committee of the Whole: 6:30pm (agenda) began at 6:31pm

Attendance: Quorum. Absent Crews, Hartke, and Marsh

Public Participation: Doctor Dottie Vera Wise (sp?), a Physician in C-U for 4 and half years when she was practicing, has been tracking criminal justice statistics of those in jail. She gave numbers of thos in jail and pointed out that such numbers need to be more easily accessible given the important decisions that the Board makes that should be informed by them. She distributed an information pamphlet showing the numbers over the last six years or so. She argued that things have improved, with a jail population averaging about half of what it was six years ago, but there is still room for improvement.

RJTF Presentation: (direct video link here)

There was a presentation by Ryan Huges and Doctor Carolyn Randolph from the Racial Justice Task Force advocating for the Community Engagement recommendations to be adopted. They discusses a project (more information here and database here) in coordination with Dr. Bev Wilson and U of I students collecting and analyzing criminal justice statistics in the area from the County Sheriff's department, Jail, Circuit Clerk, and four other police departments. One example they noted was that controlling for age, sex, and type of crime across five departments, Africian-Americans were still four times more likely to go to jail than white suspects.

They advocated for making the data more streamlined and contining the data base project with local community groups and the U of I by

1) having better access to data with dynamic records and avoiding access barriers like CAPTCHA that prevent automating data collection.
2) Getting the format of the data across systems in line with one another.
3) Cross-agency integration
4) Establishing analysis of data with diverse groups in the community.

They believe their database project could serve as an example for future databases.

After some discussion about the difficulties and regulatory road blocks in their cross-agency data recommendations, they pointed to a leadership role the County Board can serve as opposed to asking them to try to change regulations outside of their perview. A vote to adopt the recommendations was considered, but due to the complications involved it sounded like Member King was going to put together a committee group to suggest more direct recommendations for the County Board itself per Chairman Weibel's suggestion.

Other Reports:

The Community Reentry Quarterly Report will be presented on March 22nd with the Annual Report

Most of the usual County Office reports were simply filed. The States Attorney argued for her need of an assistant state's attorney to handle the work load while they are already a lawyer short on the criminal side. Staff is overwhelmed having to cover that workload. Concerns about position control (and fears of temporary staff becoming permanent drains on the budget) led to an amendment to revisit the position at the end of the fiscal year (which is the calendar year for the County Board now). The amendment and motion as amended passed with a voice vote with one nay.

Other Finance agenda items passed with a voice vote.

Treasurer and Auditor spoke about their reports. The Auditor noted their staff had won a couple awards in spite of difficult circumstances which received applause from the board.

Interim County Administrator Busey spoke about the Nursing Home report and there was a discussion and Q and A with SAK (the management agency running the home now) about recouping collections costs.

There was a debate on a band-aid measure to ensure payroll is paid even with brief waiting periods between the Nursing Home receipts and payroll needing to go out to staff that has caused consternation in the past. The measure would direct the treasurer to temporarily loan money out to ensure payroll is paid and immediately repay it with Nursing Home receipts when they come in. While nobody seemed to happy about the budget being in a situation where this was necessary, it had a broad support from the Treasurer, the Auditor, and the interim County Administrator.

Member McGuire raised concerns about the idea getting expanded down the road beyond payroll and whether this creates a loophole around the usual appropriation rules requiring 15 county board votes and the $250k limit. What a vender sues and demands repayment through this process? The argument broke down with Busey's side saying it simply prioritizes pay roll and arguing it can't get out of control as it only risks AP payments to prioritize payroll. McGuire's side pointed to the lack of limits on teh spending and believed it would be a slippery slope to other costs. He pointed to the history of Nursing Home band aids getting out of control in spite of best intentions.

The measure passed 12-6 with a roll call vote (no votes in the N-G excerpt above).

After that the board seemed anxious to wrap up and quickly passed the remaining items on the agenda by voice vote, and approved the upcoming consent agenda items and adjourned at 8:26pm about as fast as I could write that down.