One of them is worth highlighting.
In addition to hiring a forensic investigator and placing both Rourke and IT general counsel Emily McNeeley on administrative leave — Rourke and McNeeley were the subjects of one of two subpoenas reported last week; Sharon Sobol Jordan was the other — Budish has taken a seemingly unrelated step.
“We recognize that our county has been operating under different sets of rules for different employees. I will be immediately requesting that County Council eliminate all special compensation “perks” from the proposed personnel handbook,” Budish said in a statement. “Further, we will be immediately requiring all employees to fill out hourly time sheets exclusively through the MyHR system, and we will be submitting to Council a policy concerning training and education programs that applies to all county employees. Moving forward, I am instructing Earl Leiken, when he becomes new Chief of Staff, to review all county policies to ensure that they are being applied evenly and fairly for all our employees.”
This decision was due, per Budish, to the fact that the county had been operating under “different sets of rules” for different employees. Chief among those differences was the fact that top executives were getting special perks, justified on the basic of luring and maintaining top talent.
(Sharon Sobol Jordan, who got paid for hours she spent pursuing an MBA, as reported by Mark Naymik, received the most eyebrow-raising of these perks.)
In fact only yesterday, Budish’s chief talent officer Douglas Dykes — who was hired away from the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District alongside Rourke and two others in 2015 — presented a new draft of the county’s employee handbook to county council that included the special compensation perks Budish now is “immediately requesting” the elimination of.
County Council had registered their objections to the perks when an earlier draft of the handbook was presented. They wanted things like signing bonuses, extra vacation days, relocation stipends, and flexible overtime pay removed. (An internal audit found that salaried employees were paid $1.7 million in overtime in 2014, 2015 and 2016.)
But when Dykes presented an amended version of the handbook Tuesday, the perks were still included, much to the dismay of the council members. (Their reactions were reported by Cleveland.com yesterday, reactions that sufficiently communicated the message to Budish.)
“I want to make it crystal clear,” the County Executive closed his statement today: “Nothing is more important than maintaining the public trust between our residents and the County Government.”
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2018.
Just some observations. Why does the county IT department have a position for a general counsel? Shouldn’t this department utilize the county law department to review and approve contracts. The IT general counsel did cover herself by requesting review by the Inspector General. Well there’s just a slight problem, her significant other was the primary contact at Hyland. Well, I’m not directly involved, but let me go home and just talk out loud about the bid. Well da!
The chief of staff, who in essence is the second in command is afforded to leave the building, drive to Columbus, take graduate level classes and not be required to take leave. Better yet, her expenses are being paid for by the county for non-related county business. What a great damn deal.
The county executive wants us, the tax payers to affirm his BS that we benefitted by her education. Hmm. Why not permit the same action by the low level clerk or the mid level manager in whatever department, leave their desk at 10:00AM take classes, be paid just like the Chief of Staff? But no, we the tax payers would not benefit by their educations.
In short, Armond, take that BS and shove it on someone else. We are being misled by this clown.
Look around local and county government…..and you’ll see names and faces that began climbing the career political ladder during the sordid era of the Dimora criminal enterprise. And don’t think for one minute that these folks suddenly became reformers — just because they were able to scamper away from the hash spotlight when things unraveled. They became opportunists once the Feds left town.
SUCKERS