S.L. County is slashing fleet budget

Salt Lake County officials are slashing personnel and budgets in the county's beleaguered fleet division, which could mean $10 million in surplus funds going to other departments.

After firing fleet manager Nick Morgan last week, Public Works Director John Patterson is now cutting more than a dozen positions from the county's fleet force.

Although Morgan was fired following allegations of wrongdoing and improper use of county resources, the new cuts are part of an effort to eliminate ineficiencies in the system cited by a fleet task force.

"It's amazing the number of folks we've added. We went from being a fleet management and repair system to a used car dealership," Patterson said of the county's policy of replacing vehicles within a year after purchase.

Specific positions slated for termination have been selected, Patterson said, including several spots relating to the purchase and sales of vehicles and administrative positions.

That downsizing is spilling over onto the fleet's budget, with a proposal today by Mayor Peter Corroon to yank $10 million of fleet surplus funds and dole it out to county departments.

Those departments have been overcharged for fleet vehicles and services, chief administrative officer Doug Willmore said. The remaining $10 million in the fleet's fund balance may also be eventually be cut, Willmore said.

"The charges have been too much because the balance has been building up," he said. "We're going to do the calculations and return the money from where it came from."

The largest chunk of that money will likely go back to the sheriff's office, which paid roughly $1.9 million for county vehicles in 2005.

That "burgeoning cost" forced the sheriff's department to tighten its belt and contributed to several lost contracts with cities, said sheriff's office fiscal manager Jared Davis.

"We've gone through in the last three years to make sure we're as lean as possible," Davis said. "It only makes sense that we're provided a larger part of the surplus."

County officials have several other changes slated for the fleet system, which came under harsh criticism after a series of scandals that led to criminal charges for misuse of county vehicles.

A citizens panel that followed those allegations chided the fleet for being poorly managed and over funded by millions.

To prevent further scandal, Willmore said one of the major changes will be a new division at the county to handle all administrative services like fleet and personnel. Both divisions have come under fire in recent months with accusations of impropriety.

The new department will provide more oversight to those administrative functions, Willmore said, and provide a fiscal manager to each division.

"The biggest savings will be no more scandal," Willmore said.

That additional oversight would have been helpful while former fleet director was in charge, county staffer Michael Chabries said.

Morgan, who will have a chance to appeal his termination this week, did little to fix inefficiencies in the fleet, he said.

"I think that Nick was a very poor steward in working with the organization," Chabries said. "Nick wanted to say we're just a service organization when he didn't want to have accountability. That's total garbage."

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