El Dorado County Part 4 – I Become a Manager and County Politics
I was working in a Project Lead position in the IT department of El Dorado County whose offices were located in Placerville. The IT department in the county, as in most companies, is not a revenue generating department. It's role is more one of cost avoidance, i.e. you automate because it's more efficient. Organizations who are not IT companies fund their IT department by charging the other departments that are using their services which is pretty much all of them. Usually the charge is based on how much IT services they use. It's reflected in the department's budget and of course it's just all on paper. In 1991 I'm not sure how many organizations did this particularly well but our CIO was well versed in this area and he implemented a system where each department was assigned a baseline charge for IT services and then an additional charge based on that department's IT systems. The third part, a flexible/optional charge, was based on any new systems or additional modifications to their existing systems they might need or want. Annually we would meet with the department heads of each of the areas we supported to determine and define the department's wants and needs. We'd then have them prioritize the list. We, IT, would then go back and determine the time and cost it would take fulfill their requests. With that information we'd have a follow-up meeting where they would decide which items they wished us to go forward with. The combination of these would result in how much of their budget would be used to fund us (IT). At El Dorado County many departments resented these IT charges.
The next year our Programming Manager, Mike K., left. John came to me and told me he would like me to take the position. I had been in managing positions before and I had found them to be less than satisfying. I liked being in a technical lead position so my initial reaction was to say no. John persisted and said he didn't feel any of the other staff would work out. I asked about Linda, who'd been at the county longer than me and held the same position. He knew us both well and said he felt that I would work better. I asked him to give me a day to think about it. I talked with Linda to see how she felt about it and she was all for me being in the position. I still was not completely sold so I went back to John with a proposition. I proposed that he appoint me to the position on a temporary basis for a year. After the year we would re-visit and if I didn't like it I could return to my old position and if he didn't like how I was doing he could demote me back and regardless of how it worked out there would be no hard feelings on either side. He tried again to convince me to just take the position but then agreed to my plan. So, I took over the Application Programmers division. It had 24 positions but 23 people because I was holding two positions. I still had my old project lead position and now I was also acting in the Programming Manager position. There were 5 project leader positions counting myself. I still had Kathy and Norma reporting directly to me from the Social Services area. That meant 6 positions reported directly to me. The rest reported to their respective Project Leaders.
One thing I liked about working for a county like El Dorado is that it's small enough where most of the people working there felt connected. There was a sense of ownership. It was their county and as a result they felt an obligation to do what was best for the county. It was small enough so most people knew each other and genuinely cared about what was being or not being done. Of course not everyone agreed about what was best for the county and so there could be a bit of contention. For me, that was mitigated by the knowledge that most everyone was coming from a good place in that they were trying to do the right thing, even if it ended up it wasn't. Sure, there were some that were just in it for themselves but my experience in the county was those were a small minority. Another thing that could be both good and bad was there were not a lot of layers between the general county worker and those at the top. That meant that the politics were felt even at the lower levels. I'm not talking Republican/Democrat it's more vision and personality. John, our CIO (County Information Officer) was hired by the County Administrative Officer (CAO) who had been appointed by the County Supervisors. The CAO and John were both on the same page. Some of the department heads, a couple of the County Supervisors, and some of the other elected officials were not fond of either of them. There was eventually some kind of political/power struggle with the result being that the CAO was let go. That put John on the wrong side of the power struggle and it wasn't long before our CIO, John, was forced to leave the County as well.
John's replacement ended up being Ollie who had previously been over the communications department whose main function was installing and maintaining the county offices telephones and the phone lines. Somehow the Board of Supervisors and the top County officers thought that the skill set for telephones was similar to the skill set for running an IT department. Of course nowadays we are all carrying phones that are also computers but this was over 30 years ago, we are talking land lines...
Ollie was a very pleasant man. He'd been at the county for some time, was well liked and was the type that was just good at doing whatever he was told without objections. Our first meeting was very friendly, a just get to know each other kind of thing. I don't know if he knew about my arrangement with John in regards to my position but he did not say anything about it. The next week we met again and this time he asked me why we had both system and application programmers. They sounded the same to him and he wanted to know why we couldn't just eliminate the application programmers and have the system programmers do everything. In other words he was thinking he could eliminate most of the 20 programmers who were in my area. I explained to him what the difference was between the two jobs and why the county needed both of them. I tried to make it as simple as I could but I could tell he wasn't following me as he was getting the glazed over look I'd seen in the past when I tried to explain to my non-technical friends what I did at my job. At the end he seemed somewhat satisfied that I knew what I was talking about. The next week he came into my office and asked me the same question again after which he informed me that he'd been asked to give a presentation to the Board of Supervisors about all the IT functions. Ollie asked me to prepare a presentation to give the the County Board of Supervisors explaining my staffs function and why the county needed them. He said he'd start the presentation but would hand it off to me when he got to my area. I would then do the presentation for my area and respond to questions because I knew the area better than he did. I needed to turn in a hard copy of my presentation for his review by the end of the week, After his review he would pass on a copy to the CAO's office and the County Supervisors. Now I am not comfortable with public speaking and this was a public meeting, meaning that it was open to the public. I am a natural introvert. I like to think I am socially ept, but have never seen myself as much of a public speaker so I was rather dreading this presentation.
I prepared the presentation and gave it to Ollie who reviewed it and passed it along to the CAO's office who passed it the Supervisors. The following week one of the County Supervisors paid me a visit. He asked me a little about the PC's we had in the county. I gave him a brief overview but then explained that the guy he should speak to was Joe who was over the County PC area saying that Joe was much more knowledgeable on the details of the county PCs. He then started asking about my area and the programmers who worked under me. He was asking the same sort of questions that Ollie had been asking me. Such as why we needed both System Programmers and Application Programmers. I tried to explain the differences: while yes they are both programmers, they work on different areas of the computer. Among other things I used an analogy saying while roofers and carpenters both work in home construction you don't hire a roofer to build your kitchen cabinets. The conversation ended with him saying to me that I seemed like a pretty nice guy but he still wasn't sure we needed all those programmers. It was clear he wasn't buying what I was trying to tell him.
The day of the Supervisors Meeting came. Ollie corralled me along with Linda, Woody (manager of the System Programmers and Operations Staff) and Joe (manager of PC group). We walked over to the Board of Supervisors meeting. As the IT agenda came up, Ollie went up front to start it off and was about to turn it over to me when one of the supervisors asked a question that triggered a comment from another supervisor (the one who had visited me in my office) who said he'd been reading up on the computer industry and said it was his understanding that PCs were now as powerful and just as capable as the old Mainframe computers . Since PC's were so much cheaper he suggested the County replace their mainframe computer with some PCs. Since PCs came with packaged software the county could just eliminate all the application programmers who supported the County's mainframe systems. There was then a brief discussion among the 5 supervisors followed by a motion to eliminate all the county's application programmers. I looked over at Linda and remarked “Holy Shit they are voting to eliminate our jobs!” Linda just stared at me stunned. The motion to eliminate the application programming staff was seconded and a vote immediately ensued. 3 supervisors voted yea before the department head of the County Tax Collector's office interrupted the vote jumping up shouting “Wait!”. He reminded them that the property tax system was running on that mainframe and property tax was the county's largest source of revenue. He didn't think just buying a PC would instantly replace that system. At this point the vote was tabled to be revisited at the next meeting. We were saved by the County Tax Collector's office which was rather ironic as the County Tax Collector was one of our biggest and most influential political foes. The end result was the IT department was asked to cut 5 positions. Those positions ended up being one from the PC group, one from the Operations group, and three from the Applications group. Ollie cut the three lowest position from my group and so I had to layoff three of my people. It's never fun telling someone they are the victim of a layoff. Luckily all 3 of the staff that we cut had come from other departments in the county and all were able to return to their old job. The union rules were if your position is eliminated and you had previously held an equivalent or lesser position in the county, you can return to that position if that position is open or you have more seniority than the person who is in that position. It meant a pay cut for all of them but at least they still had a job. A couple of those people were two of my best workers. I was sorry to lose them. On the bright side, I never did have to give that presentation.
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