Hiring Freeze?

Happy Friday!! As it turns out.. sitting on the beach is not as productive to the work schedule as sitting in an office. I had plans this week to do a lot of things. How many did I get done? Absolutely none.

I still have three more nights to change that trajectory, so here is to hoping.

Today, we are going to talk about something easy since it does not take a ton of research.

At the commission meeting on Tuesday, Commissioner Bays suggested a hiring freeze for all general fund funded staff positions. She also suggested that when current Economic Development Director, Steve Baham, leaves the county shortly, that County Administrator Steve Howard assume that position and operate both in the interim until the budget is closer to being finalized.

It sounds like this will come back as an item at the next week so the board can discuss and vote on it.

Without assuming too much, let us look at the 2025-2026 funded positions in the county.

As you can see, the general fund funded positions have not grown that much over the years. The positions that have skyrocketed are the enterprise fund funded positions, such as the Economic Development Director.

These funds bring revenue from things like landfill revenues, water and utilities, wastewater, etc.

The important thing here is that the funds for these revenue sources can only be used in those areas. For example, the enterprise funds can only be used for enterprise fund related expenses. They cannot be used for things that the ad valorem taxes pay for... like roads.

So telling Steve Howard that he has to play the role of administrator AND economic director does NOT save tax payer dollars.

However, a hiring freeze on general fund funded positions will. Here is a look at what is currently being advertised for jobs in the county.

Those are quite a bit of job openings. Honestly, I do not have the time at the moment to dive into each and show which is general fund and which would be paid for from other funds, thus not affected by the hiring freeze, but I am sure there are several in here that would not be affected.

More importantly, I do not see any director level positions, which means that NONE of these would be approved by the BOCC at a meeting.

Now, the question... Can the BOCC even implement a hiring freeze or tell Howard he cannot hire an Economic Development Director?

Here is County Ordinance 2-201 that gives the administrator authority to run the county essentially.

Further, under ordinance 2-205 it gives authority to hire/fire employees.

So... if the administrator is the one that determines hiring/firing of employees, how can the BOCC tell him that he cannot do that job, without changing the ordinance?

Now, we all saw what certain board members thought of county ordinances with the Betz Farm contract issue. Do they just toss them to the side AGAIN to implement a hiring freeze? Would not put it past this group.

Or do they go the route they have the ability to go... the funding.

We saw this come up several months ago when commissioners mentioned that certain jobs should not exist in the county. Due to ordinances mentioned above, the commissioners could not simply fire those individuals. However, they could defund the positions.

They could do a budget transfer to remove the funding for those positions and essentially force the administrator to release them or find another funding source to pay them. But if he wanted to keep them, the commissioners could do nothing to stop him, short of changing ordinances or defunding the entire budget.

How will that work here with this proposed hiring freeze? He does not have to listen to them. They could defund positions as mentioned above, but he can continue to hire/fire as desired.

However, they are his boss, so I imagine if he does not do what they ask, they can fire him and replace him.

Will be interesting to watch play out.