Initiative aims to streamline county government

EDINBURG — A committee formed four weeks after Hidalgo County Commissioner Sylvia Handy was indicted has unveiled a list of 14 recommendations to improve accountability, transparency and efficiency in county government.

The SAFEguard Initiative was tasked with identifying ways to maximize taxpayer funds, encourage transparency in county business and proceedings and reduce fraud through improved processes in county offices.

With the county government facing a roughly $7 million shortfall for the next fiscal year, it needs to cut waste rather than burden residents with higher taxes, County Judge J.D. Salinas said. His plans for establishing the committee came about after a number of county employees and elected officials were accused of wrongdoing during his term as county judge and previously when he was county clerk.

The safeguards are also controls to make government officials responsive and accountable to taxpayers and less prone to fraud.

Handy, who was indicted on charges she used taxpayer funds to pay for personal services, made the motion Tuesday to approve recommendations even though Salinas said he wanted a week to review it. The Commissioners Court then adopted the measures.

With the initiatives in place, the harder work now lies ahead, Salinas said.

"You can have all the reports you want," he said. "But unless you implement (the reforms), you're not going to save money and you're not going to solve problems."

The Commissioners Court approved the safeguards from a list of more than 50 gathered by the committee, which was comprised of employees from the county's precincts, the county judge's office and county departments.

The others on the list are already active county policies, were not deemed feasible or will be examined in the future.

The committee wants to implement a no-take home vehicle policy, add GPS systems to all vehicles to save on gasoline and eliminate misuse and make changes to contracts and purchasing procedures.

The committee also recommended the county centralize the human resources department, information technology department and the grants process, implement background checks for new employees and conduct more work in-house, saving money on contracts and reducing the opportunity for kickbacks.

The SAFEguard Initiative formalized an ongoing process to streamline county government, said Valde Guerra, the committee leader and executive officer of the Commissioners Court.

Guerra said departments had already been instructed to find ways for the county to operate better. For example, a project to classify and set up a salary schedule for all employees was in process before the committee.

But with the ideas in place, Guerra said, the committee is formulating a timeline to implement them. Among the top priorities is the creation of a toll-free phone hotline that county residents and employees can call to report fraud. The system could be operational within a matter of weeks.

Other initiatives may take longer to implement, including proposals to construct a morgue facility or create a county engineering department.

"Some can be done right away," Guerra said. "Some of these have to be developed and the infrastructure put into place. We'll be judged by our progress."

The initiative shows the county is thinking of new ways to operate after years of certainty that tax revenues would grow and could fund bloated government, said Virginia Townsend, head of the government watchdog group Objective Watchers of the Legal System.

The OWLS submitted a handwritten list of ideas to the committee. Two of them - the fraud hotline and a plan to conduct background checks on new employees - were among the final recommendations.

"(Government) tends to get bogged down with too much stuff that isn't needed," Townsend said. "Every once in a while, you need to do something like this to make it more efficient."

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Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.