An attempt by Clark County Councilor Tom Mielke to gain more oversight of hiring was quashed Wednesday during the county’s board time meeting, at least for now.
Prior to this year, the Clark County councilors received regular reports regarding vacancies and new hires within each department, Acting County Manager Mark McCauley said. Those reports attempted to justify each new hire.
Beginning Jan. 1 of this year, however, McCauley canceled the vacancy review process to save time.
“My people are very happy they don’t have to do that,” McCauley said.
Wednesday, however, Mielke tried to argue for bringing the program back so he can “get a pulse” for what’s happening in other departments. If a group of people quit or are fired in one department, he said he wants to know if there’s something wrong with that department or its leadership.
“(We want to) find out problems before we have problems,” Mielke said in an interview with The Columbian following the meeting.
And furthermore, he explained, he wants to know if county directors are wisely hiring people. For example, he said, if a department is hiring a truck driver during the winter, perhaps it should wait until the spring in order to save on that would-be employee’s salary.
The problem is, the councilors don’t have hiring and firing powers, and any advice they could give to directors wouldn’t ultimately have teeth. Under the home-rule charter approved by the voters last November, the county manager is responsible for naming all department heads, who are in turn responsible for hiring their own employees.
Mielke’s efforts, meanwhile, gained little traction with his fellow councilors. Councilor David Madore moved instead that the budget include line items for each individual employee classification to provide “transparency” to the hiring process.
For example, if the Community Development Department needs funding for 10 full-time employees, the budget could be broken down to read “One director, three supervisors and six code enforcement officers.”
Councilor Jeanne Stewart said she wasn’t convinced that information “would be a useful tool for us,” but seconded the motion, which passed with Mielke offering the only no vote.
Mielke said he may revisit the issue at a later meeting.
