We couldn't get La Crosse County Board chair Tina Tryggestad to ban data centers, but we did have a good talk about a new committee being formed to study the structures.

We also navigated the budget landscape at the state, city, and county levels — including the benefits of the county having an administrator while the city still toils with the idea. We looked at how the county stays stable while the city faces shortfalls, and why those talks of a city administrator have gone silent the last few months.

At the state level, we discussed the budget surplus and the deal three retiring state politicians came up with behind closed doors to spend that $2.5 billion before it was voted down — a deal that basically ignored municipalities.

Tryggestad is just starting her second term as board chair and we talked about the 10 "green" members of the board and how they'll have to learn on the fly to manage a government with 25 departments and 1,200 employees. We also joked that perhaps during those lessons, the two members of the board with four and five decades of experience — Ralph Geary and Steve Doyle — should give speeches about the "good ole days."

Lastly, Tryggestad gave her take on the word transparency and we discussed how the public shouldn't need to be spoon-fed what local government is up to, but also how we could spoon-feed the info anyway.