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What is the policy set forth? The County Charter also tells you what the policy of the
<br />County is. It is declared to be the policy of the county to promote economy, efficiency
<br />and improved service in the transaction of the public business in the legislative and
<br />executive branches of the county by:
<br />1.Limiting expenditures to the lowest amount consistent with the efficient
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<br />performance of essential services, activities, and functions.
<br />2.Eliminating duplication of overlapping of services, activities, and functions.
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<br />3.Consolidating services, activities, and functions of a similar nature.
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<br />4.Abolishing services, activities, and functions that are not necessary to the
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<br />efficient conduct of government.
<br />Now you have what you are set up to do. That is the policy. How does this commission
<br />go about doing it? As your chairwoman indicated, what the Cost of Government
<br />Commission is authorized to do is you can get directly, from any department,
<br />commission, board, office, other instrumentality of all branches, so that’s legislative,
<br />County Council, your administration, other County government or from any other
<br />individual officer or employee of the County, information, suggestions, estimates and
<br />statistics necessary to carry out the duties. So, what Ms. Nicholson said to Deanna
<br />when she was leaving was, the commission can have an opportunity to call her back if
<br />they have any questions, which is true. And it’s because of this County Charter section.
<br />So you are authorized to just basically ask any department to come aboard and answer
<br />questions that you might have. Subpoena power.
<br />What is your end product? You must submit a report of your findings and
<br />recommendations to the mayor, managing director and council not later than 11 months
<br />after its appointment. There is a little bit of ambiguity here as to after its appointment.
<br />What we’re going to do is we’re going to use today as your date of swearing in since
<br />you could have not done anything prior to today anyway. The provision in the Charter
<br />regarding the Cost of Government Commission that was first passed in the year 2000.
<br />So, it is a fairly new commission, not much history. First report was done in 2003. You
<br />also have a copy of this report in your binder. The first report, the commission could
<br />only finish analyzing 11 departments. If you went back you saw that what the Charter
<br />said was you should analyze all of the departments. The commission only got through
<br />their final report with 11 of them. I have them listed up on the screen, Aging, Corp
<br />Counsel, the County Clerk and Council, Finance, Fire Commission, Fire Department,
<br />Housing, Office of Management, which would be the Mayor’s Office, Mass Transit,
<br />Parks and Water Supply. In 2003, that commission also completed draft reports. They
<br />did draft reports on Environmental Management, Police Commission, Police
<br />Department, Planning and Public Works. It worked on six – Civil Defense, Civil Service,
<br />Data Systems, Liquor Control, Prosecutors, Research and Development. What I
<br />believe that first commission was struggling with, it’s a monumental task. You have
<br />11 months. You’re supposed to look at basically all functions of County government.
<br />So, they basically, within that time frame they were able to do it.
<br />The second report was completed on January 9, 2007. What that commission did was
<br />saw input from all the commissions, all the departments, got the input, and based on the
<br />input, they chose to focus on certain departments although all of them are mentioned in
<br />the report. It really focused on Environmental Management, Police Department,
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