Citrus... We have a problem

For those that dont know, Citrus County has a set of Ordinances (seen here) and a set of Administrative Regulations (seen here). Both things help guide policies and decision making process. Both things cover staff actions as well as commissioner actions. Both things provide various guidelines on how government is to function. Take a few moments to read through them as you may learn something you didn't know about.

For this particular post, we are going to focus on how commissioners are supposed to communicate with staff. This is where I found a problem.

You see, under Administrative Regulation 3.01-5 (seen here), the way commissioners are supposed to get information is through their two employees: the County Administrator and the County Attorney.

As outlined in the regulation, if commissioners have a question, concern, etc about county related things, they are to go to the county administrator to get the answers. If they have questions or concerns about legal things, they go to the county attorney.

Those individuals then send those questions, concerns, comments, etc to the appropriate staff member for a response. That staff member then responds back to the administrator or attorney and is then forwarded to the commissioner.

Seems pretty simple right? The reason for this is to limit the interaction of commissioners with staff, who are not their employees. It also allows for the administrator to oversee what is going on with his employees and keep in the loop on various concerns the commissioners have. Overall, it keeps a communication loop and allows everyone to be on the same page. The right hand knows what the left is doing so to speak.

Great right? Well here is the problem.

Under our Code of Ordinances, in Section 2-208 (seen here), it says sort of the same thing. Commissioners are to go through the county administrator for direction to staff and cannot individually provide direction to staff members, aside from the county administrator.

However, it states: "Except for purposes of inquiry and information, members of the board are expressly prohibited from interfering with the performance of the duties of any county employee who is under the direct or indirect supervision of the county administrator by giving said employees instruction or directives."

We will discuss commissioners directing staff actions on another post in the future, but for this discussion, the bold is the important part here. We have an Administrative Regulation that prohibits commissioners from going to staff directly to ask questions, get reports/updates, etc. All that must be done through the county administrator, however, we have a County Ordinance that alludes to commissioners being able to go to staff directly for those same things.

So which is it? Which are they supposed to follow?

If you do any sort of public records requests, you will see far more often than not, commissioners going directly to staff for inquiries, updates and so on. Sometimes the county administrator is CC'd. Sometimes he isn't. The point is, commissioners tend to want answers quickly and likely do not like the slower process of going to the administrator, who then goes to staff, who then replies back to administrator, who then replies back to the commissioner. So why go through all of that when they can go directly to staff and skip the back and forth?

Here is my take... for what its worth. I feel we need to side more on the Administrative Regulation and remove the language in the Ordinance that exempts those inquiries. Why? For the good of the county. Let me explain.

If everything goes through the administrator, yes, its more work for him, but he is in the loop. He knows the questions and subsequently knows the answers. How many times do we see a question from a commissioner at a meeting and he gives the "I don't know" answer? Many times, that question was asked by the commissioner to staff directly before the meeting, but due to sunshine laws, the commissioner cant have that discussion with other commissioners outside of the meeting, so that is the only time to bring it up.

If the administrator is in the message loop, then he would have the information to provide because he has seen the question and knows the answer.

Also, by not allowing commissioners to go directly to staff for ANYTHING, the risk of commissioners working on pet projects or whatever, outside the public view greatly diminishes. Things like the 491 fiasco wouldn't happen because staff wouldn't be working with a commissioner to fill out forms and what have you, outside the purview of the administrator. Things like texting with staff directly wouldn't happen either, and we see that happening more and more often.

This would likely remove the temptation of commissioners may have to work with staff directly. More importantly, this would not put staff in a situation where they feel they have to do what the commissioner says or answer to them directly... because they wouldn't have direct communication with any commissioner, outside of public meetings perhaps. I would think this would certainly be a morale booster.

I understand that this also puts the administrator in a potentially bad working situation as they would have to tell a commissioner that they cant work with staff directly. Most people tend to not like telling their bosses "no". But, as is often said, the administrator works for the board, not single commissioners. Will two other commissioners jump on board to fire an administrator because they were told they cant go directly to staff? Keep in mind, our ordinance would say that, so doing so would be breaking the law.

I think it is time to change the county ordinance and remove any ambiguity around commissioner/staff communications. Require all communications to go through the administrator for EVERYTHING. If it takes a bit longer to get an answer, then so be it. I have rarely seen a situation where if the answer comes a couple hours later, it would be a major issue and cause problems.

If a commissioner violates the ordinance by going directly to staff, the ordinance also says: "Any such actions in violation of this section shall be malfeasance within the meaning of Article IV, Section 7(a) of the State Constitution."

That is punishable by removal from office. Seems like that would be enough to keep commissioners in their lane.