More JCEDC

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Introduction

The letter below was sent to the County Board in March 2001 regarding their planned funding of the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation (JCEDC).

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Dear County Board Supervisor,

Without open records and open meetings, there is no way the public or even the County Board can know what's happening at the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation, also known as the JCEDC.

I will show you why you cannot rely on the JCEDC's annual report to the County Board. You can't rely on self-reporting of accomplishments, and you can't expect to hear about failures. Verbal reports do not tell the whole story of what the JCEDC has been doing.

According to County Board minutes, JCEDC Executive Director Marilyn Haroldson's annual report focused on just three accomplishments in the past year: the GreatJobsWi.com web site, the HOME Consortium, and the Tourism Council booklet and web site.

In this letter, I'll show you that GreatJobsWi.com received very little help from the JCEDC and that Jefferson County's businesses and residents receive very little from it, too. I'll show you how the JCEDC's own web site is in deplorable condition. Incredibly, I'll also show you how Haroldson is actually working a second job during the day.

Haroldson told you about GreatJobsWi.com, saying the "JCEDC administers the program for Jefferson County and markets to area employers."

I called Forward Wisconsin to confirm the JCEDC's role. The web site was made by Forward Wisconsin. The JCEDC did not play a significant role in its design or creation.  In reality, Haroldson's participation was in going door-to-door to Jefferson County employers, asking for $500 per year to allow the business to list jobs on the site. For each, half of the $500 goes to Forward Wisconsin, half goes to the JCEDC.

What benefit is GreatJobsWi.com to Jefferson County employers or job seekers?  A recent check of the site shows it lists just 1,452 jobs state-wide. Only nine jobs were in Jefferson County, or about one-half of one percent. These nine jobs only came from five employers - and one of the employers was the County itself.

According to Forward Wisconsin, only eighteen employers in Jefferson County have signed up for GreatJobsWi.com, out of 563 employers state-wide. Five didn't pay anything, two paid reduced rates, so the JCEDC made $2,925. As you can imagine, most of the GreatJobsWi.com employers and jobs are in Milwaukee, the Fox Valley and Madison.

By comparison, a popular nationwide job web site like Monster.com offers more than 3,000 jobs in Wisconsin. Any job-seeker would have much better luck by visiting the bulletin board at the Courthouse or the grocery store, or picking up a newspaper.

How much JCEDC time and effort went into promoting or selling ads for this web site?  If GreatJobsWi.com was featured in the annual report, you might think this meant a lot of time was spent on it. Because the JCEDC refuses to release any minutes or records beyond its self-created annual report, we cannot know.

While Internet-base promotion is all the rage these days, it's clear the JCEDC has not actually spent any time promoting itself on the Internet. The JCEDC's own web site is a laughingstock. It has been incomplete for years. We should all hope that no prospective business visits it. Sadly, it's been visited more than 900 times since it was put on the web in 1998. If a business visited, they found next to nothing.

On the left below is the front page of the JCEDC's web site. Look closely. There are spelling errors! It still lists the JCEDC's previous office address on Linden Drive. The web site was created in 1998 but hasn't been updated since March 1999.

Next click on the "Who we are?" link, which leads to the page below. Apart from the improper English, it leads to a page that only says "est. 1945". The rest of the page is blank. This trend of fragments and blank pages will continue on the rest of the web site. I'm guessing that it's supposed to read "Est. 1995", reflecting the year the JCEDC was founded.

Click on the "Business Sites" link. If you were a business looking for land in Jefferson County, this is where you'd click. If you do, you get nothing.

In the JCEDC contract with the County, there is a large section describing a comprehensive database of available building sites, space for rent, etc. Why isn't this database online?

In theory, this is where a prospective business might search for available space. Sadly, this part of the web site is broken. The link doesn't lead anywhere, as seen below.

Next, click on "Local Links". This is where a web site would normally point you to other web sites related to Jefferson County.

In fact, as shown at right, there are no links on this page, just a few place names.

There are dozens of Jefferson County web sites for businesses and community services that could be listed here, but none are present.

Click on "Local Activities". Again, as shown below, there are just a few out-of-date, incomplete phrases and no links to other sites. Apparently someone was afraid to try to spell "Gemuetlichkeit" because it only says "G Days, Jefferson".

Next, click on "Why Jefferson?". This page only contains the word "Middle" as seen below.

This must be a very brief way of saying that the reason you should locate your business in Jefferson County is because it's between Madison and Milwaukee.

Click on "Local History". This page only contains the words "Jefferson County 180" as seen below right.  I can't even guess what this is supposed to mean.

Click on "Contact Us". As seen below, this page has a link to the JCEDC web site itself, which is as useful as a sign that says "You are here." The link to click to send an e-mail to the JCEDC isn't working. There's no mention of the new address at the Workforce Development Center.

It's not clear to me how Haroldson's very active participation in Forward Wisconsin serves to benefit Jefferson County, when so many other tasks seem to go unfinished.

Each year, Haroldson takes several multi-day trips to trade shows throughout the United States. These travel expenses are charged to the JCEDC. At these shows, she works in the booth of Forward Wisconsin. For example, she attended a lumber show in Atlanta and a plastics show in Chicago.

At these shows, she promotes Forward Wisconsin's goals. I spoke to a director at Forward Wisconsin, who said "We try to sell the state first." At a show, the Forward Wisconsin team will try to meet with every other exhibitor, asking if they have any prospects in Wisconsin. At one show, this meant 150 exhibitor meetings.

Is promoting Wisconsin the best way to help Jefferson County? If Forward Wisconsin found a business lead for Jefferson County, wouldn't they pass it to the JCEDC even if Haroldson wasn't there? How can we know how successful these trade show contacts were in helping Jefferson County? Again, without any independent means of learning about the JCEDC's successes and failures, we'll never hear the whole truth in the annual report.

In her annual report, Haroldson claimed the Tourism Council's Jefferson County Area Visitor's Guide booklet was a volunteer effort - but in fact the Tourism Council paid itself commissions for the advertising they sold for the booklet. For example, last year a member of the Tourism Council at the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce personally received more than $1,000 for selling ads for the booklet.

The emphasis on advertising sales continues on the Tourism Council's new web site at www.JCTourism.com. Only those companies who advertised in the booklet are listed on the web site. Shouldn't their promotion cover everything in Jefferson County, not just the advertisers?

The Tourism Council's web site isn't much better than the JCEDC site when it comes to clichés. As seen below, it is boldly titled "Welcome to the Jefferson County Tourism Web Page!!!!" Apparently one exclamation point was not enough. The front page features a picture of the tourism booklet.

The worn-out advertising copy continues, stating "Jefferson County, located in South-Eastern Wisconsin, has been a well kept tourism secret. The four distinct seasons and exceptional glacial terrain give residents and visitors unsurpassed opportunities …" Well-kept secrets and distinct seasons are the best we have to offer?

This site suffers from a lack of updates, too. The calendar page was last updated in November 2000. It still describes events from September 2000, grows much more sparse in 2001, and ends in April 2001.

I am sure most County Board members believe that the JCEDC is Haroldson's full-time job. This is not the case. She is also employed as the town planner of the Town of Merton, near her home in Waukesha County, an hour from Jefferson. Needless to say, this isn't mentioned in the annual report to the County Board.

According to the Merton town clerk, Haroldson has been employed there for more than five years. She assists real-estate developers with preparing their presentations to the Merton planning commission. The clerk said Haroldson works there about five hours a week during regular business hours, usually spread over several days per week. Indeed, Merton's public records say she worked more than 197 hours in 2000, at $50 an hour, for a total of almost $10,000 extra income.

For example, when I called the Town of Merton's office at 9 a.m. on a recent Friday morning, Haroldson was working in that Merton office, not at the JCEDC office. I immediately called the JCEDC office and they said Haroldson was in a meeting and would return after 11 a.m.

To be fair, even the new County contract with the JCEDC does not specify how many man-hours the JCEDC is to deliver. The JCEDC can deliver as little or as much as it wants, at its discretion, because the County never specified this. The contract doesn't say anything regarding its office hours or employee work periods. Because JCEDC records are secret, we don't know their employment requirements or benefits. (The Merton records reveal a two-week vacation in Spain last April, though.) We don't know if Haroldson receives a salary for a full-time position or if she's paid by the hour. However, I'm sure many people were under the impression that the JCEDC's executive directorship was a full-time, daylight job.

Just as in Jefferson where the Jefferson Development Corporation's supposedly full-time executive director also handles daytime duties at the local funeral home, apparently the demands of economic development are light enough that it's acceptable to regularly leave the office for a morning or an afternoon or two in order to work a second job… and it's easier to do when no one is watching.

I've spoken with several County Board members about the JCEDC contract renewal. They said
the JCEDC refused to supply a copy of its last budget before asking for its $71,000 from the County.
They said the JCEDC refused to supply its by-laws. They said the JCEDC refused to supply minutes of its meetings. If even County Board Supervisors cannot ask for documents to justify the JCEDC spending, how can the public be assured of the usefulness of this expenditure?

The new JCEDC contract requires quarterly review of compliance, with the JCEDC making quarterly reports to the County Board as a whole as well as the Budget Committee. If the JCEDC is not fulfilling the contract, it can be terminated by the County at any time.

To my eyes, this means the Budget Committee and the Board will need to hear from the JCEDC before the JCEDC receives their next portion of their $71,000. First of all, this means the Budget Committee needs to schedule a meeting before the end of this quarter - before the end of April - and that the Board will also hear the JCEDC's quarterly report at its April meeting before it releases the funds.

I hope that the Board and the Budget Committee will review the contract point-by-point to confirm that each item is being met to their satisfaction. For example, I hope they ask about all the things I've mentioned above. I'd like to know under what circumstances someone can access the JCEDC's database of businesses and available sites. When I've tried to see it in the past, I've been turned away.

Given the self-serving nature of the JCEDC's annual report, facts are hard to come by. If the annual report wasn't an accurate reflection of the JCEDC's daily accomplishments, doesn't it make you wonder what they're actually doing?

I think I caught a glimpse. At a recent meeting of the Jefferson Development Corporation, JCEDC Board member Gaylin Morgan revealed the flip side of a claim made by Haroldson during the recent JCEDC debate at the County Board. You may recall that Haroldson claimed that five large employers in the County were in financial trouble and that more than 400 jobs were at risk, and that the County needed to fund the JCEDC in order to insure those jobs would remain secure. Morgan revealed that these five employers came to the JCEDC meeting to learn their legal obligations if they had to close their doors and fire these workers. Quite a different story! Why is the JCEDC lending this sort of assistance?

I'm thankful that the County Board now has a detailed contract with the JCEDC. It will serve as a toehold for discussion so that everyone can ask questions and learn what the JCEDC is doing, who directed them to do those things, and of what value is all this to the taxpayers. Now more than ever, we need openness. We need to be able to attend meetings, view minutes, and read about the JCEDC in the newspaper. Anything less means more propaganda like the JCEDC annual report.

Sincerely,

John Foust