Resident urges clearer legal-fee and audit reporting; county finance report includes department-level legal-fee breakdown

A resident asked the Sawyer County Finance Committee to publish department-level legal-fee details and to make the full 2023 audit more accessible to county supervisors and committees.

Linda Zilmer, an Edgewater property owner and Village of Birchwood resident, told the committee she appreciated the new regular reporting on legal fees broken down by department and asked that the information be shared with county supervisors and their committees. Zilmer noted several large legal efforts in 2024 — including drafting a tourist rooming house licensing ordinance, multiple zoning ordinance amendments, and outside-counsel attendance at zoning hearings — and said supervisors might want to see how those costs are allocated.

County staff responded that the finance packet includes legal fees broken down by department and by provider. Staff cautioned that attorney time spent redacting open-records materials cannot be recovered; the county can recover staff time for producing records but not attorney redaction time. The finance director also said that the outside auditors had reviewed a smaller 2023 audit document via Zoom but that the committee had not yet received the larger audit report that explains revenues and expenditures in more detail.

Committee members asked whether the county still tracks requests and their legal costs by type (for example, open-records requests versus ordinance drafting); staff indicated they would follow up with the clerk’s office and administrative staff to clarify the ongoing tracking process.