Local Call

The January 2012 cover story of Wisconsin Counties Magazine, the monthly publication of the Wisconsin Counties Association, is the 100^th Anniversary of University of Wisconsin Extension.  Sharing the limelight with Extension is an article focusing on the 20^th anniversary of the Local Government Center.  Written by former Center Director, Professor Emeritus David Hines, the article chronicles the origin and progress of the Center over the past two decades.  The entire article on Extension’s 100^th and the Local Governments Center’s 20^th are online, or Dave’s article is reprinted here.

20 Years of Partnership: WCA and Cooperative Extension Local Government Center

 By David Hinds, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin-Extensio

This year University of Wisconsin-Extension’s Cooperative Extension is celebrating 100^th years as a partner with Wisconsin counties in realizing the Wisconsin Idea—making the resources of the University of Wisconsin System, and beyond, available to meet the educational needs of citizens, families, organizations and communities around the state.

As part of its 100^th Anniversary celebration Cooperative Extension is recognizing, this month, the 20^th Anniversary of its further commitment to partnership with Wisconsin’s local governments—the founding of the Cooperative Extension Local Government Center. The new Center brought together several local government educational programs that existed at the time, and began addressing new needs as well. The overall development and programming of the Center was, and continues to be, guided by its formal Advisory Group, made up of the directors of the Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA), the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, and the Wisconsin Towns Association.

As partners, WCA and Local Government Center staffs work together to identify key issues county governments face and how best to provide the educational opportunities elected and appointed officials will need to deal with these challenges these issues present. Over the years topics like finance and budgeting, taxation, transportation, human services, intergovernmental cooperation, recycling, land use, property rights, employee relations, effective meetings and parliamentary procedure, elections and many more have been addressed in Center programs.

Thousands of county officials have benefitted from Local Government Center programs over the past 20 years. Many have taken the opportunity to participate in County Official Workshops, held around the state in even-numbered years—just after county boards begin their new terms. At these workshops new officials gain an understanding of the functioning of county government and the important new roles they were elected to play. Experienced officials refresh and update their knowledge, share their experience and engage new topics and responsibilities they will be dealing with in their new term of office.

Following local elections in odd-numbered years similar workshops are presented for town and village officials. Each fall the Center’s Local Government Finance Workshops draw hundreds of local officials. To meet special educational needs, the Center often presents sessions at WCA and other local government association annual conferences and events.

With local government officials’ need to get timely, up-to-date information and to minimize travel and time required in mind, the Center has from the start fully embraced the use of distance education. Many county officials, for example, have participated in one or more of the WisLine statewide teleconference network programs. These program series offer officials, through their county Cooperative Extension Offices, the opportunity to stay on top of the latest changes in laws affecting counties and other important developments. Using WisLine enables the Center to involve the best possible experts from state agencies and other sources to provide information, insights and in-depth answers to questions for a statewide audience.

At any time of day or night county officials can find and download information they are seeking at the Local Government Center’s web site (http://lgc.uwex.edu), where they have free access to fact sheets, papers and other references on a wide variety of topics, information on coming programs and links to hundreds of web resources for local government from Wisconsin and beyond.

The Center is able to provide the best and most timely information thanks to its staff specialists, its partnership with WCA and its close working relationships with state agencies including the Department of Revenue and the Government Accountability Board, UW System entities like the UW-Madison Department of Urban & Regional Planning, the Cooperative Extension Center for Community Economic Development, and professional organizations like the American Planning Association and the Downtown Action Council.

Important also to county government is the Local Government Center’s role to provide support to County Cooperative Extension Offices. The Center provides inservice training on key government issues and skills to county-based Extension educators to prepare them for work with local government. Often, county Extension faculty and staff working with their county board of supervisors or departments call on Center specialists for consultation and assistance on locally important issues and special projects.

The Local Government Center provides educational support for several programs that have an impact on county economic development and tourism, namely Downtown Development and Business Improvement Districts and the Wisconsin Barn Preservation Program.

Like WCA, the Local Government  Center has adapted itself over the years to deal with new issues and changing audience preferences. New staff members were added to bring additional needed expertise to the Center, and the network of resource contacts the Center maintains continues to strengthen and expand. The Center has embraced new technologies that make learning opportunities more accessible and convenient. Working with Cooperative Extension technical experts, the Center has tested with audiences over the years various distance education technologies and continues to seek new technologies to involve officials.

In coming years increased demand for certain services, tight budgets, and fewer personnel and resources will add to the challenges county governments face. County officials will need to be even more prepared to quickly identify service needs problems and seek better, more cost-effective solutions. New knowledge will need to be learned and brought to bear. Skills needed to govern effectively and work with constituents will become even more important. WCA’s partnership with the Local Government Center will continue to provide, through effective means, timely access to a mix of relevant programs and resources that meet the unique needs and concerns of county officials.

These twenty years have passed quickly. That’s because much is new and much has changed in Wisconsin state and local government over these years. The only thing certain now is that changes and the challenges they present to county officials will continue. The Cooperative Extension Local Government Center gives a big thank you to Wisconsin counties and the Wisconsin Counties Association for their continuing support for Cooperative Extension and for being a great partner with the Center for its first twenty years. We all look forward to continued partnership and even greater opportunities to work together.