Bill Van Vactor served in Lane County government for 30 years; almost half of those were spent in the county’s highest non-elected position, county administrator. But by the end of the year he will leave the job to one of the two out-of-state applicants currently being interviewed.
Whoever is chosen for the position will have a short-lived celebration, however, because the new county administrator’s biggest challenge will be to address the uncertainty surrounding the county’s 2008-2009 budget. He’ll also try to maintain a high morale for Lane County’s 1,400 employees in 70 different departments while making a list of what positions may need to be cut.
But both candidates say it’s a challenge they’re excited to take on.
Each of the two applicants have served as county administrators before, but only Jon Caime currently holds a government position. He serves as the county administrator for Hart County in northeast Georgia where he directed efforts that led to Hart County having the lowest tax rates of Georgia’s 159 counties.
Caime understands the quagmire Lane County is in, as residents here have a history of voting against increasing taxes, and at the same time call for an increase of public safety and government-funded projects.
“If (the public) want to pay less in taxes, great, we all do. But something has to give in order to pay less. Cuts in services are one answer to a lack of funding,” he wrote in an e-mail. “It’s not all negative. Challenges create opportunities. This is a time of challenge to create the opportunity to address the future that Lane County desires.”
Jeff Spartz served in government for 28 years until last December, and his long history of public service as county administrator for Hennepin County (Minneapolis), lends him credibility in the position. However, it also helps him to understand that, should he be selected, the road ahead may be a very bumpy one – especially if the county has to implement a gas tax to fund street repair in a last-ditch effort should a statewide gas tax increase fall through in the 2009 session.
“I can see the future, and it’s challenging,” Spartz said. “I’ve been on a few of Eugene’s streets that weren’t too nice on my car’s suspension … I know Oregonians pride themselves on having one of the last states without a sales tax, so I don’t know how taboo a new tax would be.”
Spartz oversaw a complex budget planning process while he served as county administrator of Hennepin County – a history that would prove extremely valuable to fixing Lane County’s structural deficit, he said.
“All of that experience has some value. We had a terrible budget here, and we had to re-cast it three times,” he said. “So that kind of experience base is very helpful.”
But Lane County has problems of its own, and the top priority the new administrator will face has to be the preparation of the 08-09 budget because “we don’t know where we are going to get one-third of our funding,” Van Vactor said. The best policy will be to “just hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”
The federal timber dollars coming from the Secure Rural Schools Act of 2000 have kept the county afloat over the last seven years, but the renewal of these funds is volatile at best as federal legislators have yet to find a bill they feel comfortable attaching it to. If the renewal bill is attached to a larger bill that President Bush vetoes, then Congress will have to go through the time-consuming process of drafting a new bill. The county may not have the luxury of time as hundreds of jobs and services are hanging by a single green thread – the money stringing back to new SRS funding.
Van Vactor insists he is not stepping out before the chaos ensues, but regrets that he is “leaving before we get a potential solution” to the county’s budget problems, he said.
He originally lobbied to pass the SRS funding in 2000, and says that legislation was one of his proudest accomplishments during his 14-year tenure as county administrator.
However, the SRS funding does not address the structural deficit Lane County is experiencing, as the cost of running the county government is rising annually by 6 percent, but revenues for the county are only rising by 3 percent.
“The challenge here is how to maintain employee morale,” Van Vactor said. “I’m not going to miss recurring reductions every year,” he added, but does admit he “regrets not fixing the structural deficit before I left.”
[email protected]