Board Chair Devon Snyder said the friction has raised fundamental questions about the independence of the system Madison created to oversee its police department.

"When those two bodies are fighting, it's the community that hurts," Snyder said.

The dispute escalated in October when the Common Council fired interim Independent Police Monitor Aeiramique "Meeka" Glass after a controversy over her job performance. The oversight board argued the council lacked the authority to remove her, pointing to an ordinance that assigns the board responsibility for hiring and supervising the monitor.

City Attorney Michael Haas has countered that the council could end the extension of Glass's provisional appointment because the council itself had approved that extension.

The ordinance states that the oversight board recruits and appoints the monitor, with assistance from the Common Council and Human Resources, and that the appointment does not take effect until the council confirms it. But the ordinance does not spell out a separate process for a provisional monitor.

City personnel rules allow the Human Resources director to approve provisional appointments in certain circumstances. Such appointments generally last up to six months, and extensions for positions in the monitor's compensation group require council approval.

Snyder said the board has made provisional appointments in the past with the HR director's sign-off. The board voted to provisionally appoint former Alder Rebecca Kemble as interim monitor, but Snyder said HR had not approved her appointment. Haas has previously said the board cannot provisionally appoint an interim monitor without the HR director's approval.

The relationship between the ordinance's confirmation requirement and the personnel rule for provisional appointments remains unresolved, and the personnel rule does not expressly say it overrides the ordinance.

The ordinances establishing the board and the monitor's office were developed in 2020, before the board existed. In an August 2020 memo on the proposed ordinances, Haas described having a city board hire and supervise a city employee as a relatively unusual arrangement and suggested the council consider whether more detail about the board's relationship with the monitor would be helpful. The memo addressed draft ordinances and did not specifically anticipate the current dispute over provisional appointments.

Snyder said he has shared proposed changes with alders and hopes an effort to clarify and strengthen the ordinances moves forward.

In an October blog post, Alder Yannette Figueroa Cole wrote that the ordinances intentionally distribute authority and that the board is independent from the police department while operating within city government. She said the board can recommend ordinance changes, but the council must consider and adopt them.

Snyder said the board is also gathering community feedback to help shape a job description for a permanent monitor. He expects the description to go before the board on Dec. 16, with the position posted if it is approved. He said he does not yet know how a proposed suspension of the board would affect that work.