Circling The Drain

State Auditor no fan of hiring freeze and resignation incentives for budget balancing…

Instead of aggressively pursuing over $30.5 million in delinquent taxes, Mendo has chosen to address its “structural deficit” by not filling random vacancies as they pop up, even going so far as to offering incentives to staffers who voluntary quit.

As we have often pointed out this defeatist approach to budget balancing will result in a significant loss of experienced senior staff, force less qualified people into positions they’re not qualified for, cause random gaps in important services, lower staff morale, create a climate that fewer and fewer people will want to work in, and ultimately leave the county worse off if its revenues ever recover.

In his recent report, the State Auditor agreed, noting that:

“Offering incentives to employees to separate from county employment and pausing non-essential hiring delays spending that will eventually occur if the county finds that it cannot operate effectively without filling those vacancies.”

Trouble is, Mendo management isn’t paying to attention to the effects of their hiring freeze and across the board cuts on departmental budgets. So the people blithely presiding over this random staff reduction process will never realize that Mendo “cannot operate effectively without filling those vacancies.”

Mendo is also postponing facilities repairs, equipment updates and replacements, and road work to save money.

The State Auditor disapproves of this too:

“Delayed maintenance on county assets or equipment will not necessarily result in long-term cost savings. A potential outcome is that the necessary maintenance will cost more if the county performs it behind schedule because of the worsened condition of the asset or equipment or increases to the price of repairs. To reset its base level of spending and truly affect the rate of growth in its expenditures, the county must consider ending some services or operations.”

Of course, the State Auditor didn’t bother to specify what services or operations to “end.”

Besides leaving tens of millions of delinquent taxes uncollected, Mendo is still doing nothing to encourage local economic development other than seeking more grants.

As others have noted, the County itself is a major obstacle to economic development because not only does it take way too long for permits to be processed, but an unknown number of proposals are not even being submitted for fear of delay and/or ultimate denial after thousands of dollars in planning is spent.

Among other recommendations to address Mendo’s persistent deficit, the State Auditor recommended that the Supervisors “create a schedule outlining the steps it will take to address its stagnant tax revenue and increasing expenditures.”

In their response the Supervisors said they “ agree with the recommendation to create a schedule outlining the steps it will take to address the stagnant revenue and increasing expenditures. The Board of Supervisors will be holding a public workshop in the middle of January which will discuss various topics, including this audit and recommendations.”

As is clear from their passive “let’s encourage people to quit and hope for the best” approach to budget balancing, Mendo is structurally incapable of creating any such schedule of specific budget balancing steps. (They’ll be happy to create a list of meetings and workshops, however.) In fact, we’d give at least 10-1 odds that this recommendation from the State Auditor will not even be mentioned as a possibility in the Board’s upcoming budget/Audit Report workshops.