County gets advice on improvement
Lincoln County is looking to improve how it operates.
The county contracted with Matt Pickett of Business Owners Assistant of Missoula in February to help it come to terms with federal and state laws and the county’s own policies and to ensure that the county’s various departments are operating efficiently.
Pickett’s report, which was presented to the commissioners on Tuesday, Oct. 11, found deficiencies with contracting policies and hiring practices and areas where improvements are needed. He calls for a better system for gathering information on contracting activity for analytical, managerial and reporting purposes.
Specifically, Pickett was critical of a contract the county’s Asbestos Resource Program had with attorney Alan Payne.
“It is clear that even a bill showing hours and a brief synopsis of (Payne’s) activities supporting the financial side of the ARP would not be adequate for the large portion of the federal grant money he took as compensation.” He added that the county “needs help changing the accounting and program management policies which led to the ARP/EPA grant financial hold letter” on Sept. 20. “Current policies do not allow the county to stay in compliance with federal regulations or catch fraudulent or non-compliant activities taken by sub-contractors and employees,” he said. (Last month, the EPA placed the grant that funds the ARP on hold while it evaluates the legality of past grant spending.)
Pickett said that contractor performance evaluations should be completed and entered into a database, for example.
In addition, the county is not properly able to utilize technology to make its core service areas — human resources, finance, information technology, administration and payroll — work efficiently. He said that the human resource and information technology departments are stuck in a reactive cycle as a result of a lack of training and resources.
As part of his report, Pickett submitted a nine-point list of recommendations for the county.
On Friday, the commissioners met to discuss the list.
They decided to wait until a new county administrator is hired to address four of them. These include: putting out a request for proposals for an auditor, hiring a financial expert, creating a finance department similar to the seven largest Montana counties and training all department heads, core services personnel and elected officials to use the Black Mountain computer software that it got from the state years ago.
The commissioners agreed that they would try to implement five items from the list with Pickett’s help. These include: conforming with all Environmental Protection Agency requests in order to remove a financial hold on the Asbestos Resource Program, having every county department prepare capital improvement and training plans with their budgets, conducting an accounting review, converting to electronic timecards and accepting a list of prioritized changes that are necessary to comply with federal and state laws.
Commissioner Mark Peck said the county can use the Black Mountain system for the electronic timecards. He noted that the county had received 25 applications for the vacant county administrator position, which closed Friday.
Peck said that implementing the items will take an up-front investment but it will save a lot of time.
He called the report “a really thorough review” and said the recommendations are “right on target.”
Pickett added that the culture at the county needs time to heal and management needs to fully understand the ramifications of change management on its employees.
Caleb M. Soptelean can be reached at 293-4124 or by email at csoptelean@thewesternnews.com.