After seeing the headline “County Seeks Volunteers for Budget Feedback” I was reminded it is almost that time of year for county government; budget time. Actually it’s probably well under way by now and if last year is any example of what’s coming, it won’t be any more pleasant.
If I recall correctly, some difficult decisions, and the spending of reserves, lead to the drive to reinvent county government. This year though, the county does have a new manager to shepherd the process. I suspect they won’t have a great time either if nothing in the area of revenue has changed.
Years ago, I used citizen committees twice; the first was in the decision to build a new jail and the second was to review our budget and spending priorities, but the make-up of the committees were not the same. On my jail committee I wanted skeptics and people generally opposed to new taxes, with a variety of backgrounds.
On my budget committee though, I wanted people who could understand the budget, recognize countywide declining revenues, our spending priorities and make recommendations if changes were needed and also with a variety of backgrounds.
Both of these committees served me well and both made good recommendations after reviewing all the information we provided. But they really only work if you provide them with all the facts, answer all their questions as they deliberate, and are willing to accept their findings within the legal restraints you might have.
If you choose to ignore the recommendations without clearly explaining why, your committee may feel it just wasted a bunch of time-and no one likes that.
Plus it can make getting another committee together more difficult, if not impossible.
In the case of the jail committee, I was willing to accept their findings might be we do not need a jail and live with what we have. No one wanted a new jail, but after reviewing all the facts they also recognized it was needed.
On my budget committee, I was also willing to accept where cuts I may not have thought of could be made, and implement within the law those I could. By the time we used the committee we’d been cutting for several years and what was left was really personnel and services; we had little else.
But that’s the risk when you ask for serious input; you may not like the input you get.
One final thing about committee recommendations, especially if the committee recommends things that we don’t like; they don’t get blamed. Committees are sometimes used to share responsibility and make it difficult to assess responsibility. You see it in government all the time with words like “collaboration,” and “teams” or other similar words that really just avoid responsibility.
Both collaboration and teams are important — but the buck stops somewhere and in this case with the commissioners. Using the committee as an excuse to make hard decisions isn’t a good idea and isn’t leadership.
There will be difficult decisions to be made this year and for the foreseeable future; being a county commissioner isn’t going to be much fun. To get out of the habit of spending from reserves, there will be pain; some things can’t be funded to fund essential services.
And, changing the number of those commissioners, or voting for a county supervisor, won’t change that.
In addition to freeholders, there are a number of elected officials up for reelection this year and now would be a good time to ask them how they could function with less? What innovation can they bring that can streamline services and reduce costs?
Listen carefully to their answers because the winners will likely be tasked to do just that.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
