The Lakeland Times is alleging that the Vilas County Board of Supervisors violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law when supervisors convened in closed session on May 26 to deliberate compensation changes for its county finance director position.
In an open session afterward, the board approved a substantial pay increase for the position, as well as multi-year market adjustments for current finance director Darcy Smith on a 17-1 vote.
A piece in the June 5, 2026 issue of The Lakeland Times detailed the alleged violation. According to the story:
In a letter sent this week to county board chairman Jerry Burkett and Vilas County corporation counsel Nicholas George, Times publisher Gregg Walker alleged the county improperly used a statutory exemption intended to protect discussions involving specific employees to deliberate broader compensation policy related to the finance director position itself.
“The meeting was illegal, and at least part of the action taken must be null and void,” Walker wrote. “Because the board claimed that it was going into closed session not merely to discuss matters pertaining to current finance director Darcy Smith but to compensation for the position no matter who the finance director might be, the deliberation must have taken place in open session.”
Whether the county board lawfully entered into closed session revolves around an exemption under Wisconsin Statute 19.85(1)(c), which permits governmental bodies to deliberate in private regarding the “employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility.”
In a telephone interview with the newspaper on May 29, George stood by his position that the closed session was allowed, based on that statutory exemption. The newspaper contended the exemption applies only when a governmental body is discussing compensation tied specifically to an individual employee’s performance or circumstances — not when officials are setting compensation policy for a position generally.
The salary range for the position in general was exactly one of the discussions taken up in the closed session, Walker wrote, and that distinction is central. The newspaper’s position also relies on a formal opinion issued Feb. 25, 1992, by then-attorney general James Doyle. That opinion explicitly states that Wisconsin’s open meetings ex-emption does not permit governmental bodies to discuss compensation policies for positions generally behind closed doors.
In his letter, Walker said the county’s position would lead to an absurd conclusion. “To look at it another way, if bodies could go into closed session to change the compensation of any position and justify it by attaching the name of the current official to it, governments could set pay for all positions behind closed doors,” he wrote. “Superficially, this was about Darcy, but really they were arguing that pay for the position itself needed to be up-graded. Thus the discussion had to take place in open session.”
