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County CAO calls it quits |
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Friday, 21 September 2007 |
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By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 9-20-2007
Ron Juliff is hoping the third time will be a charm.
On Dec. 15, Juliff will officially leave his post as Inyo County’s chief administrative officer, marking the third time he has “retired.”
Juliff only logged five years, total, with the county, and that experience “was a real eye-opener” for an executive and attorney who had spent his entire career in the private sector, he noted. Juliff came to Inyo County after successful stints with Southern California Edison and Fairplex, the not-for-profit company that puts on the Los Angeles County Fair.
Trying to institute some more business-like and cost-effective approaches to the nuts and bolts of running the county and successfully handling the shrinkage of the county workforce while also providing a better pay package for county workers were cited by Juliff as areas where he believed the county made some progress during his tenure. Maintaining county services despite minimal growth in county revenue and keeping the budget balanced were also primary goals for Juliff and the board over the past three years.
Personally, Juliff said he was constantly amazed at how long it took to get things done as a government, and that part of the slow pace of change or action was linked to how complex and confining the California county government structure has become.
There was no controversy, turning point or conflict that played into the timing of his departure as the county administrator. When he took over the county’s top job three years ago, Juliff said he didn’t expect to stay for decades, and the board also knew that he was ultimately going to really retire at some point.
The main reason Juliff said he decided to step down by the end of the year was that 2008 is an election year with three supervisors spots on the ballot. Installing a new administrator before the election heated up would be “less of a distraction” for all involved, he noted.
The Board of Supervisors has accepted Juliff’s resignation, but has made no decisions about the process that will be used to find and hire a replacement.
Juliff came into the administrator’s job in January 2005 after a tumultuous election year that saw three incumbents ousted and the resignation of former administrator Rene Mendez. Voter resentment over Measures A and B fueled the election debate.
The new board (essentially the same group now in power) quickly took care of Measures A and B, but then ran into what would become a lingering budget dilemma. Quite simply, the county was spending more money than it was taking in and had too many employees to support with what little cash it had.
Juliff said one of the things that happened somewhat quietly in the past several years is that there are about 60 fewer county employees than when he took over, a reduction of more than 10 percent. (That doesn’t include about 30 jobs eliminated in 2004 using a retirement incentive program and not filling other vacancies). Those staff reductions were accomplished without instituting any layoffs or buy-out offers. Instead, the county simply did not fill every position that became vacant. Department heads determined whether the work could be accomplished by fewer employees, and when it could, positions were eliminated.
“That’s an easier way to do things,” when it’s necessary to reduce the overall size of the county workforce and try to “right size” that workforce so critical tasks are completed with the most efficient, cost-effective levels of staff to do the work, Juliff noted.
Judging by comments from the citizenry, the level of services provided by the county hasn’t dropped to the point to prompt complaints, despite fewer workers on the payroll, Juliffnoted.
While allowing the county workforce to shrink, Juliff also pushed to provide better pay for county workers. Juliff said the Board of Supervisors “realized they had to pay more” to retain and attract employees, especially those providing critical health and safety services.
With the backing of the board, all the employees of the Sheriff’s Department got substantial raises, and a new process to provide “premium pay” for employees with special skills, degrees or licenses allowed such groups as nurses, attorneys and engineers to see their pay scale boosted.
The general workforce also saw solid pay gains when considering the state of the county’s finances. Being fair and upfront with employees helped to improve relations with the county’s unions, and create a climate where the latest contract was negotiated fairly quickly and was a three-year deal, Juliff noted.
In an effort to “run the county more like a business,” Juliff implemented some much-needed changes. The way the county paid employees’ Social Security taxes was adjusted, at no cost to the county or the employee, to make the pay plan comparable to the public and private sectors. Also, the purchasing policy was overhauled and simplified to create less paperwork but still leave a paper trail.
Then there was the issue of fees. For decades, the county prided itself on not charging citizens more than token fees, at most, for specific services. Driven partly by a tight budget and partly by the example of almost every other county in the state, Inyo increased numerous fees, many for the first time in decades. Juliff said the county’s fees are still probably the lowest in the state.
While having low fees is an admirable goal, not consistently raising fees as costs are always going up is “going to catch up to you,” Juliff noted.
Despite all the adjustments, large and small, to the county's financial operation, there is one reality that makes Inyo County unique and will likely keep it in a tough money situation.
The county simply doesn’t see much development and growth, since there is so little private land (only 1.7 percent of the 10,000 square miles of Inyo is in private hands.). The county is lucky to get one fairly large subdivision application a year, for example. Juliff noted that without the ability to grow and entice new subdivisions, businesses and industry, the county will continue to struggle to generate enough income to cover increasing costs of doing business.
As for the county jumping in with a big economic development plan that will propel growth, don’t hold your breath.
Juliff, who is also a lawyer, noted that state law doesn’t allow the county to create enterprise zones with special tax and other breaks to entice businesses or development. Nor can the county create a redevelopment agency to partner with private business to promote development or redevelopment.
And since the county charges virtually no development impact fees, it can’t even entice developers to the area with a promise of reducing county fees, he noted. “We can’t provide any incentives,” said Juliff.
It doesn’t help that in the past few years there has been vocal and sometimes legal neighborhood opposition to new developments, he added.
Water issues are always on top of the list in Inyo County, and Juliff noted he brought a bit of a different perspective to the water wars since he was not in Inyo County for the 30-year battle. He pointed out that the Long-Term Water Agreement has only been in effect for 10 years, although the outlines of that deal have been floating around for 25 years. Thus, the county and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power have actually started to act fairly quickly to start to jointly address some problems in the agreement, he noted.
“Things have changed over the past 25 years” when the LTWA first emerged, he noted, and taking action to make changes only after having the agreement legally binding for 10 years is actually moving fairly quickly for government.
The work to update the Green Book and getting the Lower Owens River Project moving will almost force the county and LADWP to work together in the future. Juliff said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the county and LADWP could continue to cooperate instead of argue and litigate in the future.
He was not so optimistic about the general nature of government.
“Government is not particularly efficient,” he said. And in California, with a welter of state laws, referendums and changing regulations, there are times when the governing landscape “just doesn’t make sense.”
The biggest surprise he got when he started to work in the public sector after decades in private business was that “a county has a complicated political and legal structure” that severely limits what a county can do in virtually every arena. “It really is far more complex than almost anyone realizes,” Juliff said of the constraints the state and voters have put on counties.
That’s one reason why, when Juliff tried to sum up the most challenging aspects of his time in government and as county administrator, he said what popped to mind was that “what I thought would be easy was not, and even simple ideas or changes involved a complicated process to implement … what would take a couple of months in the private sector takes a couple of years to accomplish in government, and I had to adjust to that.”
On the plus side, he said he was proud that he and the Board of Supervisors were able to make adjustments to the county workforce, keep costs contained as much as possible, balance budgets and maintain services “in a county of 18,000 people spread over 10,000 square miles.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 26 October 2007 )
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