Board Seeks Elevated Vetting of Individual Supervisors' Ideas

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA - The Riverside County Executive Office was directed Tuesday to develop a vetting process intended to estimate costs associated with supervisors' proposals before they're put on the board's agenda to ensure budget impacts are known well in advance.

"This came about because of all of our budget challenges (at the beginning of the current fiscal year)," said Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who sought the stepped-up scrutiny of supervisorial items along with Supervisor John Tavaglione.

"My intent is to look at the big picture stuff, not the small matters," Jeffries said. "I don't want to be out in the weeds on the small stuff. It's just important to have a roadmap ahead."

Jeffries emphasized the "need for a process whereby we as individual board members submit ideas that are evaluated by the Executive Office."

Tavaglione agreed, acknowledging that the testy budget-related exchanges of July might have been avoided had the EO assessed various proposals, including several cost-cutting ideas from Jeffries that Tavaglione didn't like, referring to one of them as "crazy."

"Kevin and I had a good meeting and discussed how we could do things better, make the county better and try to work through our many challenges," Tavaglione said. "I don't think everything needs to be vetted by the Executive Office, but obviously there are major issues put forward that affect policy and reorganization. There are times when we need to look at those. We believe that could save us a lot of money."

The rest of the board expressed general support for a formal vetting process, though Chairman John Benoit opined that there will always be "routine issues that would not benefit from a steep" degree of scrutiny.

"When we're asking the Executive Office to do this, we should better define what the exceptions are," Benoit said, pointing specifically to community improvement designation funds, which each supervisor receives annually to distribute at his discretion, within certain parameters.

Supervisor Chuck Washington was of the same opinion, saying it would be counterproductive for the EO "to get bogged down ... with a lengthy evaluation" of every proposal when the dollar amounts in question are not significant.

Supervisor Marion Ashley said he didn't mind enhanced scrutiny because too often a board member might feel "uncomfortable" withholding a vote for a colleague's plan out of fear of seeming "disrespectful," and thus letting the county's chief financial officer and his staff examine wish lists could provide grounds for healthy debate.

County CEO Jay Orr said his staff will apply financial assessment procedures, but will await further direction from Jeffries and Tavaglione regarding how and when to utilize them.

– By City News Service. Patch file photo by Renee Schiavone.