County seeks right fit for administrator vs. coordinator

Taylor County’s administrative leadership was the topic for an ad hoc committee given the job to explore options and bring a recommendation to the full county board.

Taylor County has historically favored a decentralized approach when it comes to a formal leadership process. Attempts to have more centralized administrative authority in the 1990s failed due to personnel issues at the time, and the county board has been hesitant to go down that road again instead favoring a system of strong committees with specific committee chairs and department heads having much of the formal day to day running of the county.

With a generational change in leadership over the past decade, the committeedominant system has increasingly frayed. This has been aggravated by high profile conflicts between departments and the county board. There have also been issues where different committees have handled things differently, opening the door to confusion among staff and the public regarding county procedures.

This has left some on county board calling for change and a more formal approach to day to day administrative oversight across all county departments.

Since she was hired two years ago, county human resources director/administrative coordinator Nicole Hager has been given additional authority to by the county board in order to address issues that have arisen.

The county recently created an ad hoc committee to look at administrative leadership and try to determine if an administrative coordinator remains the best option or if the county should go the route of hiring a full-time county administrator or elected county executive.

State law spells out the duty and authority of administrators and executives with the major difference being that administrators are hired by the county board while executives are elected. Since Taylor County has under 750,000 residents it is not required to have a county executive. A county administrator has the power to appoint committees, does most of the work in preparing the annual budget, and handles most hiring and personnel issues.

In a summary of the three types of administrative governance, committee member Lorie Floyd stated, “I do not favor the county executive. I don’t feel it would be a good fit for Taylor County.”

She said she would favor an administrator or an empowered coordinator.

Her views were shared by other committee members including Bud Suckow who also highlighted the large number of committees the county has saying that an administrator could help reduce the number of committees at the county level.

The potential cost of hiring a dedicated administrator has been a barrier to discussions about this option in the past. However, Floyd said it would actually save the county money through less committee meetings, and less personnel issues.

“How many lawsuits and special investigations have their been in the past 10 years?” Floyd asked.

Hagar noted that as human resources director she would likely have reached out to the county’s labor attorneys with questions regardless of if the county had an administrator, and said it would be hard to quantify that cost. Andy Phillips, an attorney who works with the Wisconsin County’s Association sat in on Friday’s ad hoc committee meeting offering input and gave the example of counties that have reorganized their administration and been able to drastically reduce the amount of committees that had to meet. “They are a bit longer at first, but they are more impactful and get more done in their meetings,” he said.

Committee member Scott Mildbrand favored the approach of giving more authority to the administrative coordinator. State law gives the county board broad ability to assign duties to that position to make it into what works for the county while also not taking away the authority of the county board.

He also advocated for a split in the responsibilities saying that while he agreed with the need for a person to handle the personnel issues on a day to day basis, he thinks an elected official should do the financial aspects for the county.

In the end, ad hoc committee did not come up with a recommendation at this meeting, but instead will come back for at least another meeting and hear from counties that have recently transitioned to an administrator model.