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Hamilton Seizing Power, Muzzling Public Input

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JOHN HERBERT From Where I Sit

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 21, 2009

Updated: 02/21/2009 05:11 pm

The other shoe has dropped. Trying to figure out what the county's new organization, or "leadership team," has in store for the local taxpayer, I've spotted a rather unnerving twist: County Administrator David Hamilton is grabbing as much power as possible to his own office.

First, he creates his own tiny leadership group. And now he's attempting to stymie public input. The timing couldn't have been worse - didn't we just elect and send a new government to Washington based on the catchword "transparency?"

For what it's worth, a Hamilton-type reorganization is probably long overdue. The county never really needed 20 or so mini-administrators for maybe 165,000 people, but the initial assumption is incorrect. After you deduct all the snowbirds, we barely have 100,000 full-time residents.

To make room on the commission's new agenda points, Hamilton has decided to reduce citizen input from 90 minutes to only 30 minutes a month, starting in March. With annual salaries of $60,000 you'd think the commissioners could manage full work weeks and even toss in a few extramural nights of glad-handing.

To which Hamilton responds: "We're packing in an awful lot in two board meetings (a month)." And to which I would add: Only twice a month? Why not weekly? We expect commissioners to take their elected positions seriously.

If the unelected county administrator is giving the commissioners a lesson in passing the buck? What new bureaucratic finagling will Hamilton pick by going back to school at county expense? And here I thought our new administrator had been hired "merely" on merit and vision.
Citizen input has not exactly inspired countywide action campaigns in the past. They're usually on a par with "was it some greater environmental hazard that caused Aunt Nellie's varicose veins" or "why does Uncle Henry's back yard keep flooding."

The item has been on the agenda as a safety valve for whatever concerns or frustrations the good folk of Hernando County may have had bottled up inside them for months. Surely, public perception counts for more than 30 minutes a month.

I realize citizens can also address specific agenda items as they make their way through the commission's chambers. And have done so, rather heatedly at times. But citizens don't set the county commission's agenda.

The new organization plan barely pays lip service to several key issues. How much money, for example, will it save the taxpayers? How many employee reductions will it entail? Reorganizations always call for "rightsizing" government. The initial document doesn't explain how or what specific improvements we will notice.

Neither does the reorganization deal much with what may turn out to be the biggest long-term challenge of all - what to do with eight newly-created "middle managers" suddenly caught "without fancy title or big office" that were once, as philosopher-author Eric Fromm wrote years ago, their apparent vestiges of power and authority.

The plan doesn't assign the "new" middle managers any particular role. How, for starters, will they be expected to handle what looks like demotions? Middle managers can easily become hostile and counterproductive.

Logically, they can either be cut (isn't that really what "streamlining" is all about?) or have their wages adjusted downwards. Or taught new tricks, like serving and supporting, typically lower-status roles they are not particularly used to.

Sounds like a first reorganization move may have to include a big dose of internal training for our "new" middle managers.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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