Travis County Commissioners Court
September 14, 2004
Item 10
10. Consider and take appropriate action on proposed changes to budget rules
for fy05.
>> thank you, judge and Commissioners. You should have received
a memo and revised budget rules on Friday. The memo is three pages. The first
page simply recodifies the changes that were made last week. If I could start
on page 2 of that memo, just walk you through two additional changes that
came up during the week that we would like to bring to your attention. The
budget rules currently have a -- have a line drawn around the benefit line
items that prevent money from being used into or out of benefit line items
as automatic budget adjustments. We are asking for an exception, there are
five other exception, but this exception is related to the cell phone policy.
If a department establishes a cell phone allowance, they will need to move
money from the cell phone line item into the various benefits. Rather than
bringing those to the Commissioners court each time as a -- as a non-automatic
budget adjustment, we would like to have an exception where those are included
in the automatic budget adjustments. The second change is the current budget
rules have a separate definition of capital. For software that sets it at
$10,000. The court recently approved fixed asset rules, that defines all fixed
assets at $5,000. So we changed the budget rules to represent the removal
of the software at $10,000 that was previously in the budget rules. That's
to make it consistent with the other current county policy, the county auditor's
office has reviewed these two rule changes, they concurred with the proposed
changes. The last item is we included the proposed language from Commissioner
Davis regarding green circled employees. We did mention that -- that after
review and thought that if we were to adopt such a rule, we would need to
include some additional definitions in the budget rules that we would need
council from the auditor's office and hrmd because we currently don't have,
well, I think the court and everybody understands the definition of the word,
we don't actually have them written down related to what permanent salary
savings are and what green circle employees are. If we are going to have a
budget rule that says that permanent salary savings need to go to green circle,
we feel though those terms need to be define sod that the rule can be properly
implemented. We also below that raised several question that's we think that
the court should address related to its rule change. Just so there's no confusion.
Primarily, whether the 1.75% would need to go to green circle before it could
be used for any other purpose. Whether new hires need to be at no more than
the budgeted low for that slot or whether departments could hire according
to other policies, just so long as they stayed within their salary budget.
The third decision would be of course all of the other uses of permanent salary
savings which is reclassification, promotions, reorganization, savings and
the like. And with that I would turn it over to you all for discussion.
>> I certainly understand the -- the sentiment because I
think we all are -- are concerned about green circles. But I知 going to continue
to advocate that this ought to be something that we do separate and apart
from what our budget rules. This is kind of the thou shalt list of things.
This is a policy that we need to discuss, but I think there are a few more
unintended consequences. There are a lot of folks that use green circles,
bring somebody in less than the minimum as a -- as a technique on how to hire
somebody that they are not quite sure might be a good fit for that job, but
they want to go ahead and give them a chance to perform and if they do they
can bring them up as their skills and this skill base level improves. Also,
I think -- the three most notable green circles happen to be our own executive
managers. I think that would be beyond embarrassing that all of the money
gets scooped up from -- through very large departments to take care of three
people, there may be not be anything left over for anybody else within the
department. I just think there's an awful lot of stuff related to green circles
that's really it's policy and for the really something that belongs in the
budget rules. But we do need to have that discussion about green circles.
I personally think we ought to give the departments the flexibility to handle
their green circles, but I think we need to leave to it those departments
to decide whether the most pressing issue within their department that is
left over is dealing with the green circles because that 1.7% is supposed
to handle an awful lot of stuff. The left over money is supposed to do for
performance based pay, any kind of salary, market salary kinds of things,
internal equity issues. That if you basically say green circle has to go first,
I知 afraid there's not going to be anything left there in terms of any flexibility
in terms of departments solving their problems and for us to leave the heck
out of it.
>> if you -- if you change it to encourage.
>> I like that.
>> is that consistent with the other budget rules. Do you
have rules that are require and other rules that are encouraged? Or are the
rules in fact rules?
>> yeah. That's why I知 thinking it doesn't belong in this
document.
>> the budget rules attempt to be as black and white as possible
related to their direction and to how the operations of the county are going
to be. I don't think -- encourage makes it permissive, so -- so I知 not sure
that -- that you are essentially doing any damage by inserting that language.
But I would have to talk with the county auditor's office about the distinction
of encourage versus require. But it seems that as long as the language is
permissive, there wouldn't be any substantial impact from the -- from the
budget rule.
>> well, what departments do is help us address the -- the
green line employees issue. We are hoping that they used permanent salary
savings which we really define as salary savings in excess of funded salary
savings, right. We budgeted an amount for -- for flexible spending by the
manager, that's not salary savings. 5.5, 5.7% and we say, okay, you got to
use four for a cost of living, the rest of that is not salary savings, right.
What I would be very careful about is engaging in a debate exactly what the
definition of permanent salary savings is at this time because I would want
to ensure that h.r., The county auditor's office, the planning and budget
office were all unified in our definition of what exactly permanent salary
savings is so that we could bring it to court in a unified fashion and there
wouldn't be any confusion or contradiction between the various administrative
departments.
>> I didn't know that -- I知 sorry, go ahead. I didn't know
that was a -- that was a variation as far as semantics, the definition, the
salary savings. Pretty consistent across the board. I知 not sure that -- actually
clearly defined in writing --
>> you didn't like the definition I just gave, I take it?
>> the definition that you took had -- included the department
salary savings budget, for example, that's really regarding temporary salary
savings that the department generates over the course of a year, rather than
permanent salary savings.
>> this is strictly, permanent though?
>> permanent salary savings is a thing that's not temporary,
but permanent. Permanent salary savings. Let's say a vacancy in a department
is not filled, for example. There are vacancies that -- that department didn't
fill during the course of a year. And at the end of the year, whenever if
-- if that -- if those -- if those vacancies still occur, then the idea of
the permanent salary savings and green circle employees within that department
they should be able to use permanent salary savings to -- to address the --
the shortcomings of the green circle employees within their department. That's
my understanding.
>> what you just described was the same thing that the county
judge just described which was temporary salary savings. Permanent salary
savings is a permanent change, not a temporary change, not a temporary savings
as a result of vacancies. A permanent salary savings occurs when someone leaves
that's budgeted at x dollars and you hire their replacement at something less
than x. And that will occur throughout the year where they will -- the department
will live within their entire permanent salary budget. What we have here are
things called budget targets. And it's one number. What happens is there's
movement, people move in and out and in and out. They leave, they come, they
leave, they come. Departments are free to hire at different levels within
the range.
>> I thousand you all need to work to -- to gain the uniformity
that you -- that you described so eloquently a few minutes ago. Can you get
it done in two weeks? That's going to be a drop dead deadline for --
>> but do you want the word encouraged or require, that's
the policy question?
>> I知 at encourage. [multiple voices]
>> encourage.
>> we can take the rest of the year to draft up a policy
year change to bring to you through personnel amendments and leave this budget
rule as simply departments are encouraged and --
>> leave it at that.
>> any objection.
>> I just want to make sure that it's [indiscernible]
>> move approval of the proposed changes.
>> second.
>> and ask staff to work on any necessary definitions to
carry out the budget rules.
>> yes, sir.
>> but for clarity, judge, it's departments are encouraged
to utilize permanent salary savings ...
>> with no objection are from the court.
>> making sure that we know what we are doing.
>> no problem.
>> okay.
>> okay. Thank you. All in favor? That passes by unanimous
vote.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you guys.
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Last Modified: Thursday, October 27, 2005 10:29 AM