McHenry Co. looks at eliminating vacant, frozen positions

McHenry County officials say they are going to look at eliminating frozen or vacant positions to more efficiently plan for future spending.

The county board’s budget task force met Friday to talk about employee salaries and benefits, which make up more than 75 percent of general fund expenses. The task force is composed of the board chairman and committee chairmen. No decisions were made at the meeting.

There are 74 vacant county positions on the county’s payroll, defined as positions that are not filled but funded in the budget, and 34 frozen positions, defined as on the roster but neither filled nor funded, County Administrator Peter Austin said. The county employs almost 1,400 people, about 200 of them part-time employees.

Vacant positions can be filled by department heads, but after three months their necessity can be called into question by the board, Austin said. That has not been done in the past, but now is the time, he said. “It’s an opportunity to skinny things up and get a little bit more aggressive,” he said.

The McHenry County Recorder has nine frozen positions and eight vacant ones — mostly recording specialists — and 39 active employees, according to the county’s human resources department. Valley Hi Nursing Home has 16 vacant positions, mostly Certified Nursing Assistants, with 165 active employees, and the public health department has five frozen positions and 10 vacant ones, with 141 active employees.

“A lot of us are feeling like this is the new normal, and we’re not going to slingshot back,” he said, referring to the consequences of the economic downturn. “We can make policy-level decision to wipe these out and start fresh (with frozen positions). For vacant ones, we need to get aggressive about asking why has this position been vacant for 24 months.”

County board member John Jung Jr. called it “a shell game” played by department heads who budget for positions, then don’t fill them and tout their ability to save money. “At the end of the year they say, ‘Look, we’re helping you guys out, let’s take the funds out for something else,’” he said. “A lot of it is hocus-pocus.”

This was the budget task force’s second of four planned meetings that began in February. The next meeting is on Friday, April 13.