The City of Rhinelander has responded to Oneida County circuit judge Mary Sowinski’s Sept. 11 order directing the municipality to provide additional information to aid in her review of Rhinelander Police Sgt. Kurt Helke’s challenge of the police and fire commission’s February decision promoting Chad Brown to the position of police captain. In a letter dated Sept. 17, the city provided the minutes of the police and fire commission’s Feb. 5 meeting and the application submitted by Helke for the police captain, as the court requested. Sowinski also requested documentation of Chief of Police Josh Chiamulera’s recommendation to the commission regarding the promotion.
The Sept. 17 letter, signed by City Clerk Austyn Zarda, states that Chiamulera did not give the commission a written recommendation as to which officer should be promoted to captain.
“The court requested the written recommendation of the Chief of Police, but no such document exists nor did such a document ever exist,” the letter reads. The chair of the PFC, local attorney Todd McEldowney, is then quoted as follows: “The Chief gave an oral recommendation before the interviews and there was nothing in writing. Because of his preference for Chad Brown, and in the name of fairness, I excused the chief from the oral interview process.”
In May, the court ordered the city to produce all materials related to the PFC’s decision to promote Brown over Helke, including any scoring sheets, notes and evaluation materials; correspondence related to the process; any written decisions, findings or memoranda; and all written communications with the applicants. The court’s Sept. 11 directive was described as an order on the “adequacy” of the city’s response to the May order.
The court’s function in this matter is to review whether the promotion decision was made lawfully. In a certiorari review, a court examines whether the body kept within its jurisdiction, acted according to law, and reached a decision supported by evidence in the record — not whether the court would have reached the same conclusion.
Helke, who is representing himself, filed his petition on March 6 — the same day Brown was sworn in as captain. He contends the PFC violated Wis. Stat. § 62.13(4), which requires promotional decisions to be grounded in merit, efficiency and fitness. In his petition, Helke argued the panel applied no disclosed criteria, issued no written findings, and selected a candidate with fewer than five years of supervisory experience over him despite his approximately 23 years in a supervisory role.
Central to his argument is the absence of any record explaining the panel’s reasoning.
City attorney Steve Sorenson did not respond to a request for comment on the court’s order on the adequacy of the city’s response. Previously, Sorenson told the Star Journal that the Police and Fire Commission is “an independent agency not controlled by the city.”
“The members of the Commission are very respectable, well-educated members of the community with many years of experience on the Commission,” he wrote in email to the paper.
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