Salt Lake County still looking for personnel director

Salt Lake County better pay up if it wants a qualified personnel director.

That was the County Council's consensus after more than an hour of deliberation behind closed doors Tuesday. The council reviewed three applicants for the position before deciding to not make a decision at all.

The council must appoint a replacement for personnel director Felix McGowan, who will officially go into retirement Feb. 1. Just 16 people applied for the position, which was advertised with a salary range of $63,408 to $93,864. Salt Lake City has about 100 applicants to sort through to fill their human resources director position, but they offered between $71,890 and $93,864, councilman Jim Bradley said.

"To get somebody good, we need to be able to pay up," Bradley said.

Meanwhile, the County Council asked Mayor Peter Corroon to appoint an interim personnel director. During that estimated six-month interim period, the council asked Corroon's administration to reclassify the personnel director position, a move that could raise the advertised salary.

It's up to Corroon to decide how to reclassify the position. After Tuesday's meeting, Corroon said he didn't know exactly how he plans to change things, but did say he would love to reclassify the position so he could appoint the personnel director, not the County Council.

Current personnel director Felix McGowan has taken a lot of heat recently after some high-profile audits. Last fall McGowan was placed on a week's administrative leave following an August auditor's report citing nepotism and improper hiring practices. The report also concluded that McGowan did not curb those practices nor appropriately discipline workers.

The other audit criticized McGowan for failing to curb abuse of the county's tuition program, which an audit found was riddled with sloppy accounting and improper administration.

McGowan said the audits had nothing to do with his coming retirement. He said he is leaving to take care of ailing family members in Texas.

Following the allegations of improper hiring and tuition reimbursement abuse, Corroon moved the personnel department under the new umbrella of the Division of Administrative Services. The new division is intended to give more fiscal control and oversight to departments such as personnel and fleet, both of which have been recently scrutinized for mismanagement.

In sixth months, Bradley said, he hopes to see a bigger candidate pool from which to choose. Although the final three candidates brought before the council Tuesday were "good people," they just weren't good enough, Bradley said.

"They were very good, but we felt we should be interviewing people a step above them," Bradley said. "They weren't of the caliber of people we felt we needed . . . to run this position."

---

E-mail: ldethman@desnews.com