As reported last Friday, Harford County has been gradually reducing its maintenance staff for the Department of Parks and Recreation, as workers are not replaced when they leave and contractors take on more mowing duties.
The spokesperson for Harford County Executive Barry Glassman's administration, Cindy Mumby, says the move to more contractors is aimed at reducing costs, as Glassman and his folks are "constantly looking for ways to be more efficient and save taxpayer money."
The mix has shifted from about 80 percent county forces doing the mowing to an even split of county employees and contractors, according to Mumby, who made it clear the switch is "not outsourcing," because people aren't losing their jobs, etc., etc.
On that latter point we beg to differ. If it quacks and waddles like a duck, well, darn it is a duck, and moving to more outside contractors, as opposed to having the work being done by your own employees, is outsourcing in our book.
Is that such a bad thing? Depends on your perspective, we suppose. If the work can be done cheaper and with the same or better quality, then taxpayers should indeed be happy. Well, maybe happy. After all, the proof of savings is when the taxpayers see tax reductions. That's not happened yet in the Glassman administration, but in fairness, it's also early in the game.
Despite the window dressing of civil service, most people working for county government got there because they knew somebody, were on the right political team or had a family member on the payroll. It's been that way for generations and frankly hasn't changed significantly under Glassman. This isn't to say county employees don't do a good job, because by and large they do, and we aren't bashful about saying it, having watched the local government as closely as The Aegis has over the last 160 years.
If the county executive wants to cut out jobs, as he did last year in getting rid of the landfill employees under an outsourcing deal with the Maryland Environmental Service, a dubious arrangement in our view – MES is just government masquerading as "quasi-public," whatever that really is supposed to mean – then apparently he's of a different stripe from the average politician.
Billy Boniface, the county executive's right hand man, recently told David Anderson of The Aegis that the county saved $500,000 from the MES deal last fiscal year. We don't put much stake in Boniface's credibility, however, so we're not necessarily convinced there were big savings. For instance, has your trash hauling bill gone down in the past year? We suspect not.
Fewer jobs on the payroll will supposedly translate to a lower cost of doing business. Assuming Glassman doesn't take the savings and create jobs some other places or pump the money into pet projects – something he and Boniface frequently criticized the previous county executive of doing – then the question remains: When will we see these savings in our own pockets in the form of lower property or county income tax bills?
Simple equation, isnt't it?