JANESVILLE — After months of pushing resolutions in what he characterized as attempts to combat sex trafficking, Rock County Board member Mike Zoril this week unsuccessfully tried to pull Rock County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force funding from the county’s 2024 budget.
The task force’s total annual allocation is $150,000.
At the county board’s budget meeting Tuesday, Zoril cited a rift that had occurred between the board and the task force as why he wanted to pull back the funding.
The explanation immediately received pushback from county board member RJ Sutterlin who said the task force hasn’t “done anything but help this cause of children being trafficked.”
Zoril had moved to reallocate $750,000 of unused ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds toward for anti-human trafficking initiative funding in the budget. That initiative had been proposed to be allocated $375,000, but that amount was amended to about $1.1 million after board member Brian Knudson proposed, earlier in Tuesday night’s meeting, adding another $750,000.
Zoril also attempted to tie human trafficking into funding for the Community Action of Rock and Walworth Counties homeless shelter project in Darien, as he tried to pull funding for the construction of that.
Community Action of Rock and Walworth Counties is in the process of replacing its Twin Oaks homeless shelter, at an anticipated cost of $6 million. Walworth County has already allocated $1 million toward the new shelter.
“Human trafficking is a terrible crime and we need to do everything to fight it. However, our Rock County money belongs in Rock County. We should not be shipping it over county lines. If you were to talk about building this project and if it was to be built on this side of the county line, that’s a different story,” Zoril said, calling the expenditure inappropriate.
County Spervisor Kathy Schulz, who sits on the county’s Human Services Board, said it’s not uncommon to spend $2,400 a month to house a person who has recently become homeless in a hotel in Rock County.
Community Action of Rock and Walworth Counties “aren’t charging the people anything. They are giving them 60 days to get themselves together, to find a job, to put aside money (and) to learn how to manage things better. We are going to be paying more money out if we are not willing to support this,” Schulz said.
That amendment also failed.
After a Stand Against Illegal Immigration Week resolution failed in June, Zoril attempted another resolution with similar wording, tying human trafficking to it.
Other parts of the budget
Zoril also attempted to eliminate an equity strategist position, which had been titled as equity management previously. There is another equity management position elsewhere in the county.
Zoril attempted to cut two equity management positions in the budget process last year to fund two other positions in the county.
“This is a position that’s come up two years in a row for budget cuts. It’s vacant so now is a good time to do it because we don’t actually want to force anyone out of a job. Anyone who has been paying attention to our meetings, let’s say hypothetically we didn’t eliminate that position, it would be pretty darn risky to want to go into that position now that the board has looked at this position multiple times and that position could be cut at any time,” Zoril said.
That proposed cut also failed.
Neither did the county board allocate $500,000 for the Woodman’s Sports and Convention Center in Vlogý. The board did approve $500,000 of ARPA funding to the Beloit Public Library’s Discovery Playce.
