After watching the county spend $300,000 last year on outside legal help for employment-related matters, McHenry County State’s Atty. Gary Pack had a bit of advice Monday for reducing those fees.
The county, Pack told a County Board committee, ought to create a human resources department.
The county’s independent auditors have given the same advice for at least three years. But while the auditor’s advice was virtually ignored, Pack’s plea wasn’t.
The Law and Justice Committee voted unanimously to instruct the board’s Management Services Committee, which oversees hiring, to consider creating a human resources department. The ultimate decision rests with the full County Board.
The county has been operating without such a department, even though it has more than 900 employees. Pack said a properly trained human resources staff would be able to head off many of the problems, including training, discipline and terminations, that result in threatened or actual lawsuits. Their knowledge could also reduce the need for legal opinions.
“If we had one, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” said County Board member Donna Schaefer, referring to the thousands of dollars Woodstock attorney James Harrison has been paid to represent the county on labor issues.
Pack’s argument for a human resources department came in response to criticism from County Board members Mary Lou Zierer and Patricia Dusthimer over the huge tab Harrison has run up representing the county on sensitive labor and personnel issues.
They said that instead of paying Harrison a $100 an hour fee, Pack could save money by putting Harrison on retainer or adding an employment law specialist to the state’s attorney’s staff.
But Pack said he knows of no experienced employment law attorneys who work for less than $100 an hour. He added that the county pays Bruce Mackey, a labor attorney the County Board uses on union matters, $190 an hour, which lately has worked out to $40,000 a month.
Pack also estimated that adding an employment law specialist to his staff would cost almost $270,000, including salaries for the lawyer, a part-time assistant, legal secretaries, a paralegal and an investigator. And he pointed out that those costs would be fixed, whereas the legal fees paid to Harrison are determined solely by case volume.
That volume has soared, reflecting the employee-relations trouble the county has been having. Seven top administrators, including the county administrator, finance director and information services director, have resigned or been forced out of office since last December. And last month, employees in two county government departments voted to join the Teamsters union.
In 1997, the county sent Harrison 46 new labor-related cases. He received 19 new cases in 1996 and 12 in 1995. Those lawsuits are in addition to legal opinions Harrison gives to the County Board, other elected officials and department managers.
Committee member Wayne Kurzeja said that dropping Harrison would be “penny-wise and dollar foolish. We’re paying for quality work. We should look internally as to how problems are being generated.”
Glenn Gable, chief of the state’s attorney’s civil division, told the committee that Harrison has saved the county untold amounts of money by helping it avoid lawsuits or settle them for small amounts.
Pack’s and Gable’s arguments seemed to sway Zierer, who serves on the Law and Justice Committee, to their side. She said little during the discussion and supported the resolution backing Pack’s use of Harrison and calling on Management Services Committee to consider creating a human resources department.
