With the budget season on the horizon, the County Council has accelerated its efforts to get some sorely needed staff appointed.
The seven-member panel agreed Tuesday to hire a council auditor to fill the position vacated by Michael Treherne, who resigned Dec. 6.
Mr. Treherne was active in the council's budget approval process each spring and annually reviewed the audit of county finances conducted by an outside accounting firm at the end of each fiscal year.
The council also inched toward selecting a council secretary and appeared to be close to approving a new council attorney.
Councilman Barry Glassman, who with President Joanne Parrott and Councilman Mark Decker makeup the personnel committee, told the council that the qualifications for the auditor's position would be drafted by the committee for the full council's approval by March 7 and that the job could be advertised after that.
Councilman Robert Wagner said he feared that wouldn't be soon enough.
Considering the time it takes to review applications, interview candidates and vote, he said, it is unlikely that the auditor would be on board in time for the budget work sessions scheduled for April.
"We should have started this process 60 days ago," Mr. Wagner said after the meeting.
"Anybody who is qualified for this job will be overburdened now with tax accounting and will already have a pretty full plate."
The county executive must submit the fiscal 1996 budget to the council for review by April 1. The council has until May 31 to approve it.
The council auditor works on an annual contract and is paid by the hour for specific projects assigned by the council.
In previous years, Mr. Treherne had attended all the budget work sessions and made suggestions for tightening each of the county departmental budgets.
"He raised some very important and vital questions last year," said Mr. Wagner. "He may have saved the county $600,000 in the excesses he found."
The council also agreed Tuesday to allow Mr. Wagner to join Harford's director of human resources, Randy Schultz, and a member of his staff on an ad hoc committee that will review the 108 applications received for council secretary.
The three-member committee will rule out applicants who do not meet the job specifications and otherwise pare the list to a workable number for the council to consider.
Mr. Wagner said 40 percent ormore of the applicants might not be qualified, most likely a result of being misled by the job title. The title of council secretary suggests a clerical position, "when in fact it is more of a management job," he said. "It's more like a department head."
The secretary oversees all administrative functions of the council and supervises its secretarial, clerical and professional employees.
The executive post was advertised as paying $36,728 to $48,885 a year, but Mrs. Parrott has said that she would like to hire a new secretary at the lower end of that range.
Former council secretary Doris Poulsen retired in December, although she had vacated the position 18 months earlier when she was injured in an automobile accident. Assistant Council Attorney James Vannoy has been acting council secretary since June 1993.
The council has moved faster to find a new chief attorney.
That position was vacated by H. Edward Andrews III, who resigned in December, citing "philosophical differences with some members" of the newly elected council. As a contractual employee, Mr. Andrews was paid $27,500 a year for the part-time position.
The salary will remain the same.
The attorney job drew 18 applicants -- nine of whom were interviewed. The council's personnel committee narrowed the list one candidate this month.
But when Mrs. Parrott issued a memo asking other members to interview the proposed appointee in time for a vote at the Tuesday meeting, council members Mitchell Shank and Susan Heselton objected vehemently to the lack of choice.
Traditionally, the personnel committee has placed more than one name before the council for consideration.
The vote was postponed, and the committee agreed to release the names and resumes of the other two candidates on the "short list" to the rest of the council.
A vote on that position is not expected before mid-March.