March 10, 2008

Home rule queries judge
Audience members question purpose

By ED COX
of The Dalles Chronicle

     The Wasco County Home Rule Charter Committee faced more questions about its purpose even as it heard from a high-level insider at its seventh meeting Thursday.
     Before the committee interviewed Wasco County Judge Dan Ericksen, citizen Chip Wood took advantage of public input time to ask just what is “broken” about the county to justify the effort involved in a home rule process.
     And Maupin mayor Denny Ross sounded a similar note near the end of the meeting, warning the committee that it had better be prepared to tell south county residents exactly what’s wrong.
     “We’re sittin’ here in a high-speed dither if we’re not fixing something,” he said.
     Committee members and supporters took exception to that view.
     “I don’t think there necessarily has to be anything broken,” Georgia Murray told Wood, adding that the committee was asking to change something — the form of the county’s governance — not necessarily fix it.
     And Doris Flint, a home rule petitioner and wife of committee vice-chair Lewis Flint, told Ross that the committee, in suggesting as-yet-unspecified improvements, was attempting to exercise “foresight” about the future of a growing county.
     Still, committee member Chris Zukin said he does believe it makes sense for the group to come up with reasons for its eventual suggestions and at least identify what improvements would occur under a new form of government.
     Possible advantages of home rule were among the subjects the committee probed Ericksen and county finance director Lynn Rasmussen about in their extended interviews.
     Saying the “root of all evil” is not money but the lack of it, Ericksen explained that his office has been hampered largely by an inability — at least until now — to add staff.
     Ericksen doubles as county adminstrator and says his full-time adminstrative assistant is highly efficient but overworked. They’re currently in the process of adding half-time help to keep things from piling up in the office.
     Ericksen questioned whether a transition to home rule would create any efficiencies unless it permitted the addition of even more staff, a possibility he implied was unlikely since he expected home rule government to be more, not less expensive.
     While he emphasized that assessment depends on where the committee decides to go with its proposed charter, he noted that most home rule counties have both paid administrators and between three and five paid commissioners.
     The county’s recent financial straits make the issue of cost of government one that the committee will have to consider seriously, Ericksen said.
     And he noted that if the Wasco County home rule effort succeeds, it would be the first time since the passage of anti-tax Measure 50 in 1997 severely limited Oregon counties’ abilities to raise revenue.
     Ericksen said he knew of no real revenue-raising advantages for home rule over statutory counties, but did concede that the former might enjoy more flexibility in buying and selling property.
     Still, he said, “I don’t think you’re going to get more of anything no matter what you do.” He noted that the emphasis in county government has become the need to do the same with less.
     Committee chair Keith Mobley assured Wood, who had asked about a financial analysis, that cost was something the group would closely examine.
     Meanwhile, the committee should gain a clear picture of the county’s financial situation when Rasmussen honors a request by Zukin to provide summary information on the county’s general fund revenues and expenses.
     Rasmussen, the committee’s other interviewee, was brought on board three years ago when longtime treasurer Linda May left. Ericksen said Rasmussen’s hiring was part of a “major reorganization” that consolidated most of the county’s financial functions in a two-person finance department and reduced the treasurer’s office from 1.5 to .5 FTE.
     Half-time is not truly enough to cover the treasurer’s duties, Rasmussen testified to the committee, although as many of those as possible have been absorbed by the finance department. Still, she said the current treasurer, Judy Kaiser, struggles to do the minimum required by statute.
     Asked by the committee whether she saw any advantages or disadvantages of moving from an elected to an appointed treasurer, Rasmussen, who has worked for both Multnomah County (which is home rule) and the City of Gresham, said she has seen them both work, albeit differently.
     It comes down, she said, to whether you want “direct accountability to someone who has all of your cash” or prefer that person be accountable just to the commissioners.
     The position of the state association of treasurers is to remain elected, she said.
     Rasmussen highlighted a series of improvements that have been made to the county’s financial handlings, not least of which was the implementation, in late 2006, of the “Eden” financial software package.
     That software, she said, dramatically reduced the county’s exposure to fraud and brought it out of the accounting dark ages by keeping it, among other things, from having to hand-calculate PERS contributions.
     Noting that county clerk Karen Coats remains the budget officer for the county, Murray asked Rasmussen if that function couldn’t also be covered by her office.
     Rasmussen said they certainly could handle it but, as a result, would basically have to give up their function of analyzing the budget in favor of a simple processing of it.
     On March 20, the charter committee will meet with Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Hansell, who shepherded that county through the state’s last successful home rule effort in 1993.