As I have written before, growing pains are prevalent in almost all organizations and the Blaine County government isn’t immune.
Everywhere I lived and worked, there were three places to go for the best gossip in town – the newspaper, the hospital and the courthouse. We here in this office try not to tell what we know unless it is news – or at least I make that my policy – and I don’t know about the hospital. But there seems to be a lot of disharmonies at the courthouse lately.
I get it, if you work with someone for a while, they might get under your skin. If it looks like this one is treated differently from that one, it might rile somebody up. And the county is in that between-grass-and-hay period that is tough on everybody.
The county has around 110 employees, mostly full time. The various executive officers – elected officials – have tried from one time to another to field human resource issues.
But none of them has the time or patience to devote to full time HR, and it isn’t what they signed up for. They do a great job at fixing roads and bridges with what funds they have to work with. There are tax people and compliance people and the support staff who work their behinds off making sure the right papers get to the right people at the right time.
But I believe it is time for the county to step into the next stage of development. It needs a human resources officer or office. That office could deal with employee handbook revamps, insurance, and length of service issues. It could be responsible for handing out the required reprimands or kudos and riding herd on vacation time, reimbursement verification and all those other things that HR does.
I am quite sure there are agencies in the state government equivalent to the Municipal League for cities and towns who could help the county find the appropriate person for personnel.
Those services aren’t going to be free and they probably aren’t going to be cheap, either. But really, in the long run, when the commissioners aren’t wearing that deer in the headlight look they get when faced with HR issues, when the county is one step closer to being able to operate without fear of expensive and time consuming lawsuits, the cost of an HR officer will be well worth it.
To start with, it might not even have to be a full-time on-site position. That could come later. Maybe the position could be a county manager and lift some of the more mundane jobs from the elected officials. After all, should the county clerk oversee ordering paper clips? I’m sure there are more important tasks at hand.
Now I will be the first to admit I know very little about how the county government runs. I don’t know if the clerk orders paper clips. And my opinion matters very little, no more than any other citizens’. But I believe if the personnel and personalities could be handled privately in one office, things would operate a lot smoother. And the county would be one step closer to being run like a business, rather than a rumor mill.