The 33rd Annual Salute celebrates the benefits that public sector ingenuity and excellence bring to taxpayers and communities throughout Wisconsin. Award categories recognize local governments and school districts for innovative problem-solving, advancing racial equity, and public-private cooperation, as well as individuals in the public sector for excellence, leaders of the future, and lifetime achievement.
Eligibility for Salute awards generally is for accomplishments or individual performance from August 2024 until August 2025.
The 2025 recipients were:
Innovative Approach to Problem Solving
Camp RISE
City of Milwaukee and Employ Milwaukee
Camp RISE is a transformative summer program for youth ages 10 to 13 designed to confront Milwaukee’s youth disconnection crisis. Launched by Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Employ Milwaukee, and Milwaukee Public Schools in 2022, it blends paid career exploration with community enrichment, mental health supports, and workforce readiness in a camp-style setting. A number of Camp RISE graduates have gone on to participate in city summer employment programs, and surveys of campers and parents and guardians report that campers learned employment and social skills, as well as improved their self-esteem.
Honorable Mention
QR Code Garbage and Recycling Schedule Lookup Tool
City of Milwaukee
La Follette/Gladfelter Award for Innovation in State Government
Department of Safety and Professional Services
Secretary Dan Hereth, Deputy Secretary Jennifer Garrett, and Assistant Deputy Secretary Niko Ruud
With its new Digital Wallet Card, Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) made our state the first in the nation to implement digital credentials for licensed professionals across occupations. DSPS administers more than 240 licenses for professions ranging from doctors and nurses to realtors and electricians. With the Digital Wallet Card, license holders can log into their account by phone and download a copy of their credential to their Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Benefits include license holders now being able to carry proof of licensure on their phone, and citizens being able to easily confirm professionals are properly licensed. DSPS has received positive feedback and has seen increasing downloads since the January launch, and it expects this growth to continue next year.
Effort to Advance Racial Equity
The winner of this award has respectfully declined to accept it.
Intergovernmental cooperation
Two-County Consolidated Emergency Dispatch
Ashland and Bayfield Counties
Facing staffing challenges and the duty to serve two counties with a combined area of more than 2,500 square miles, Ashland and Bayfield counties collaborated to create the Ashland/Bayfield County Emergency Communications Center (ECC). After years of discussion, study, and the approval of both county boards, this joint emergency dispatch center went live in December 2024. It enabled both counties to meet efficiency goals, reduce response times and best utilize staffing. In addition, the counties were able to increase emergency services while maintaining expenditures at pre-consolidation levels. The ECC demonstrates how two counties can work together to improve public safety through thoughtful planning and teamwork.
David G. Meissner Award for Public-Private Cooperation
Homeownership Partnership
City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity
The city of Milwaukee has a longstanding partnership with Habitat for Humanity to help Milwaukeeans achieve homeownership. In recent years, the partners have taken on a number of innovative strategies that have deepened the impact of this effort. These include initiatives to build homes on vacant lots formerly owned by the city, rehabilitate severely distressed properties, help existing homeowners with critical home repairs, and make innovative use of tax increment financing (TIF). These efforts have formed a critical piece of efforts to combat Milwaukee’s housing affordability crisis and its well-documented racial inequities in home ownership.
Jean B. Tyler Leader of the Future Award
Jeremy Triblett
Milwaukee County
As Prevention Coordinator of Community Access to Recovery Services at Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division, Jeremy Triblett has helped the county’s efforts to counter substance abuse and overdose deaths. Through the Harm Reduction MKE initiative, he led the effort to place vending machines throughout Milwaukee County that give access to life-saving supplies such as Narcan, medication deactivation bags, and gun locks. He also oversaw the Better Ways to Cope (BWTC) initiative, a harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and recovery campaign. Triblett’s colleagues praise his enthusiasm, relationship-building skills, and credit him for significantly increased access to life-saving resources and information.
James R. Ryan Lifetime Achievement Award
Maureen Murphy
Village of Mount Pleasant
Maureen Murphy recently retired as administrator of the village of Mount Pleasant, after a career in local government spanning 35 years. Murphy was the village of Slinger’s first female administrator and served as county administrator for Door County, where her accomplishments included restructuring employee pay and benefits in the wake of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10. When she arrived at the village of Mt. Pleasant, it had just landed one of the biggest economic development projects in Wisconsin, the Foxconn project, and staff turnover was high. Under Murphy’s tenure, she worked to address staffing issues while attracting additional development, including the Microsoft Complex. Murphy also was the first female administrator elected as president of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities.
Norman N. Gill Award for Individual Excellence
David Schmiedicke
City of Madison
As finance director of the city of Madison, and a state budget director for two Wisconsin governors prior to that, David Schmiedicke has played a key role in some of the most consequential state and local government budgets in our state over the last two decades. In the process, Schmiedicke has become widely respected at the state and national level for his extraordinary breadth of knowledge about local and state government budgeting and finances. He also has served in various national professional organizations, including on the executive committee of the National Association of State Budget Officers, and currently serves on the Executive Board of the Government Finance Officers Association.