Jefferson County Commission seeks to change the way volunteers are chosen for citizen positions in county government.
There has been a major policy change in the way the county advertises and fills volunteer citizen positions in county government. This change reduces transparency and reduces the opportunities for public participation.
Background
During the March 6 (agenda item 14.2) and March 20 (agenda item 9.2) County Commission meetings, the County Administrator, Edwina Benitez (resident of Maryland), requested that the County Commission change the policy regarding how open volunteer citizen positions on county bodies were handled.
This followed a very ham-handed situation where when filling open seats left on the planning commission by the election, some applicants were given as much as a week’s notice that they were to interview in front of the commission and others were only given a few hours. Those given only a few hours were put at great disadvantage. Some of the County Commissioners directly stated in the selection process that the presence of people at the interviews was a deciding factor.
All of the county commissioners who were recently elected, ran on improving transparency, but that is not what is happening here.
What is happening
Two major changes affecting transparency have occurred.
Secret Choices
Rather than interview all applicants that apply for a given position, the County Commission will now choose a certain subset of applicants to be interviewed and dismiss the remainder of applicants before the interview process. This subset will be chosen BEFORE THE PUBLIC MEETING of the County Commission. The County Administrator will send the Commissioners the applications by email. Each commissioner will choose one applicant to interview, then only those applicants will be interviewed. This may not conform to the open meetings act, reduces transparency, and increases cronyism.
Next to No Notice
On the County Administrator’s request, the County Commission voted unanimously that the county change its policy regarding board appointments. See the previous policy here.
The new policy removes the requirement for:
- notice to be at least 2 weeks, and
- be made
- in the local paper of record – The Spirit of Jefferson
- on the County’s website
- in the email alerts
- on the local government cable channel 17
The new policy replaced these requirements with: “The Commission will advertise openings at least twice on social media and via email distribution lists.”
The new policy does not give a time line for how long the positions are required to be posted or how long between the two social media posts and two emails. See the proposed new policy here.
The Issues
There have been immediate problems with this policy change.
On Wednesday, March 26, the County Administrator posted an advertisement for several open positions on the County Facebook page. The post was made on Wednesday after 4 pm and stated “Current Openings- which may close as soon as Thursday,” then listed the openings available for application on various County bodies. The positions appeared to be advertised for as little as overnight.
This greatly reduces the amount of notice to the public of opportunities to serve. It also allows county commissioners or staff who wish to stack boards with loyalists to notify their chosen candidates first, allowing these candidates to have far more time to prepare resumes and be ready to submit them in the shortened application time.
This also allows commissioners to eliminate qualified candidates out of view of the public, with the secret ballot before the public meeting.
The only adjustment that was necessary to the old policy was to remove the advertisement on the cable channel 17 which no longer exists and add social media advertisement which is now more appropriate.
There was no need to remove the advertisement in the paper. This is the typical way legal notices are made and so it makes sense to use the paper of record as an advertisement location for these open positions.
There was no need to reduce the notice time from two weeks down to as little as overnight either. This just plain does not make common sense.
Take action
Tell the County Commission:
Reconsider this policy.
- Require that open positions be advertised for at least two weeks prior to the due date for the applications by required mechanisms.
- Require that openings be advertised on the County Website, County social media accounts (twice, once at least two weeks before and once one week before the due date for applications), County Email alert system (twice, once at least two weeks before and once one week before the due date for applications), and the County Paper of record The Spirit of Jefferson (Twice, with the first at least two weeks prior to the application due date and one no more than 10 days before the due dates).
Send public comment to the County Commissioners today and tell them to change the policy back and recommit to transparency.