Columnist Jon Ralston: Reilly’s plan produces innovative ideas

Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2001 | 8:46 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 ralston@vegas.com

CONSIDERING the high ego/loon/incompetence to quality public official ratio in Southern Nevada local governments these days, taking the top appointive job in any of them would have to be considered an act of incredible bravery or manifest insanity.

But to then take the post and actually -- now this is shocking -- try to accomplish something substantive, well, now we're talking rubber room candidate. So lace up the straitjacket for Clark County Manager Thom Reilly, who this week unveiled a multifaceted plan to streamline county government and actually make his dysfunctional family of bosses look good.

Reilly, in a presentation and interviews Tuesday, did just about everything right -- that must have been the Managing 101 he was teaching over at UNLV before he took the job a few months ago. He gave credit to his elected masters. ("This was a direction given to me by the commissioners when they hired me.") He presented an easy-to-read outline for us Fourth Estate types. (We media folks like things simplified so we don't have to dumb it down too much for the public.) And he did not overplay his hand. (He didn't emphasize the half-a-million dollars in savings, which he shouldn't because it's a minute fraction of the budget, but emphasized the procedural and cultural changes he is trying to effect.)

Nothing that is called the county manager's "Organizational Review and Resource Committee Recommendations" will be greeted with anything other than skepticism. Even though the panel that helped Reilly develop the plans was made up of an inestimable crew of government and private sector experts, the tendency is to believe that this is all for show.

The cynical view is especially appropriate in this venue because A) The Silly Septet has not exactly distinguished itself during the last couple of years as a trend-setting, progressive bastion; and B) The commissioners clearly are fretful that state lawmakers want to rob their coffers (this is Peter) to pay off a mounting structural deficit (this is called Paul), and they want to show that they are fiscally prudent.

But Reilly has done more than just help the board look good with this proposal. By harnessing the minds of former county employees such as Guy Hobbs and Terry Murphy, businessmen such as Bob Forbuss and a PR man par excellence in Dale Erquiaga, Reilly has mined some productive and even provocative ideas to improve government efficiency while also making his board look like budget hackers. To wit:

* He proposes merging human resources and administrative services, giving the latter nebulous department he and Murphy used to oversee some real, concrete responsibilities.

* He wants to eliminate general services (the city of Las Vegas has done this) and put its functions in other departments.

* He is bifurcating the parks and recreation functions to let one side do the building and the other side do the servicing.

These are all potentially good ideas. But they are the A-1 sauce on the steak. The meat of his proposal is not so much about the mergers, which will headline all the stories, but the cultural changes he is trying to effect:

* Performance contracts for all department heads

* Rotating zero-based budgeting so these chiefs will have to justify their expenditures

* Privatizing (if he can get by the union) various services such as janitorial and security

Reilly surely will take heat for one aspect of his restructuring -- his creation of a third assistant manager position, which would seem antithetical to his purpose. But he makes two good points about why he has done so.

First, he argues that if 60 percent of what the county does relates to the courts and public safety, why not have one person oversee it?

And, second, he has made a very clever choice for the position -- Catherine Cortez, who once was Gov. Bob Miller's chief of staff. Of course, most of the media will focus on her being the daughter of ex-county commissioner and current LVCVA chief Manny Cortez, as they did when she took her job with the state. But that's de rigueur. What's noteworthy about Cortez is that she is an attorney, she has government experience and she is smart. Oh, and did I mention that she's a woman? Diversity at the upper levels of government? Such a concept.

Reilly is no dummy when it comes to politics, either. He has quietly built consensus among commissioners, so the meeting next week will simply be a rubber-stamp, with the usual rhetoric from the elected folks. A neat trick if Reilly can accomplish it.

Maybe, just maybe, he's not so crazy after all.