Winona County auditor to enable election record creation after redaction fix; board tables public-records software renewal

Winona County Auditor-Treasurer Chelsea Wilbright told the county board that staff have tested a method to efficiently remove protected images from an election record and that she will enable creation of that record going forward. Separately, the board tabled a proposed contract renewal with public-records vendor Garnicus pending additional vendor information.

Wilbright briefed the board on efforts to produce what she called the "Caswell record" for the Nov. 22 election cycle. She said producing the earlier record required "a ridiculous amount of man hours to redact," because images of write-in entries are protected and had to be removed manually. "The last line before the history on that statute... says data as images are protected non public data," Wilbright said. She told commissioners that county attorney and IT staff tested a way to extract those images and replace them with text efficiently and that, "now that we have a way to efficiently redact, the Castle record, I will be enabling the creation of a Castle record going forward."

The board then discussed agenda item 5.2, the proposed renewal of Garnicus (vendor) for public-records management. Commissioner Tricia Elsing raised objections to a 10% automatic annual increase in the vendor's pricing formula and said the escalator risked "bloating government spending." "It's pretty high. I mean, 2% is general, 3% maybe max," Elsing said, asking whether the county could negotiate lower increases or a fixed rate for a multi-year term.

County staff replied that the contract included added modules (a CRM module and an "essentials" package) that drove part of the price increase and that Garnicus's internal storage capacity was large; staff also said the vendor has been heavily used for records requests across county offices. Chad Lang (county staff) said he would contact the vendor representative and seek more detail: "I'll reach out to our rep. Jody... I'll reach out to him today, try to get some more information, and and see what I can do."

County Attorney Simon (identified in the transcript as 'Attorney Simon') urged commissioners to consider the volume of outside requests the county receives, including media requests tied to ongoing cases, and said the system had reduced complaints and eased staff workload compared with paper-only processes. "We get data requests from all over the country," Simon said, noting that elections and certain cases produce substantially increased request volume.

After discussion, the board voted to table the Garnicus renewal until the next meeting while staff obtain additional information from the vendor.

No formal vote was taken on the auditor's decision to enable creation of the election record; Wilbright stated it as an administrative action. The board did not change policy or adopt new statutory interpretations during the meeting.