Friday, Aug. 3, 2001 | 4:49 a.m.
Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at [email protected]
IF EVER THERE WERE a governmental petri dish where idealism would seem destined to wither rather than flourish, it is the Clark County Government Center.
The politics of dysfunctional personalities, unbridled ambition and serial silliness should stifle any Pollyanas who might wander in. But not Thom Reilly, the new manager who begins his second week on the job determined to change a seemingly intractable culture by growing confidence in the Gogol-like bureaucracy with the help of a few friends.
Reilly's euphemistically dubbed "Organizational & Resource Review Project" is on the commission agenda this Tuesday after the manager was catalyzed by his own beliefs and the urging of Chairman Dario Herrera. (This has a double benefit for Herrera. It burnishes his fiscal conservative bona fides for his congressional run and gives political cover to Reilly to remove staff dead wood and reorganize the largest government in the state.)
Whatever political impetus -- or eventually political impediments -- Reilly faces, his genuine enthusiasm for this project is clear -- and could be a harbinger of what he brings to his tenure. He is willing to ask questions -- about how the county spends money, about how it lobbies the Legislature, about how it maintains parks -- that not only don't have easy answers but will rattle the politicians and department heads who believe stasis is preferable to change. The seven commissioners, who love to meddle in personnel matters and have their personal favorites among staffers, could be more of a hindrance than a help.
"Maybe we can't do it," he said last week. "But we at least have to try. We have to create the atmosphere to discuss this stuff."
Reilly has called upon an unusually talented and experienced sextet to be on the committee charged with carrying out his mandate. Almost all have experience inside and outside government, including ex-county budget maven Guy Hobbs, ex-county Administrative Services Director Terry Murphy and ex-city of Las Vegas Chief of Staff Rose McKinney-James. Add in two businessmen, Bob Forbuss and Jeremy Aguero, and Dale Erquiaga, who may have the best resume of all for a job like this, having worked for the secretary of state's office and now working as the head of public relations at R&R Advertising.
Reilly knows that this is partly a public relations problem for the county, one exacerbated by a Gang of 63 that sees the local government as a bank teeming with money and ripe for a withdrawal by the state.
"It's clearly a direction of the commissioners to me that we are looking at the criticism that the county is flush with dollars -- we want to go through some type of process to start looking at that," he said.
The seriousness with which the manager is directing this task and his determination to include sacred cows is contained in an internal county memo outlining some of the areas the committee will evaluate. The memo lists the obvious ones that could be reorganized or streamlined: general services, finance, parks and administrative services and human resources. But it also includes more dicey topics such as: public communications, the new air quality department, the legislative team, the so-called 437 funding process, which some see as personal slush funds for commissioners; and the county hospital and social services, one of Reilly's keen interests.
Reilly is strikingly candid in discussing these problems. To wit:
* He believes the public information function needs to be revamped -- he even talks about doing focus groups for feedback -- to ensure that residents actually have faith in government. For instance: "People have the feeling that they are outmaneuvered by developers. They go to a meeting and the commissioners call the developer by his first name and the citizen gets three minutes to respond."
* The parks problem is an instructive example of how one part of the vast county bureaucracy does not know what another is doing. "It's not streamlined," Reilly said. "If someone sees a light out, that's general services. If the grass is too high, that's parks."
* He clearly knows the county lobbying team needs help. "We have four contract lobbyists and 13 lobbyists in all," he said incredulously. "What is our strategy and what is our plan to work with the Assembly and Senate folks?"
Reilly also talks without the bellicosity of some of his bosses on thorny issues like the competition between University Medical Center and Sunrise and the need to work out issues before they reach a crisis point and the Gang of 63 intercedes.
Reilly thinks this is not just about saving money but more about reorganizing and mostly about changing the way people think -- on the inside and the outside. And he knows it cannot happen overnight.
"This is not an end-all," he cautions. "It is a beginning ... I don't think this is all idealistic."
Let's hope not. Actually, only seven people have the power to kill the chances for this to be really effective. You know their names.
archive
