Linn supervisors signal they will take county's facilities operation from Miller

CEDAR RAPIDS - The months-long dispute between Linn County Auditor Joel Miller and the Linn County Board of Supervisors is over but for the formal vote on Wednesday.

The five-member board on Monday signaled to Miller that they will take over the management of the county's 30 or so maintenance and custodial employees, a responsibility in Linn County that has been part of the auditor's job since 1986.

A draft resolution prepared for the supervisors' formal vote on Wednesday calls on the supervisors to turn the county's facilities operation over to Garth Fagerbakke, who used to work as facilities manager under Miller and who has been in a temporary assignment as the county's flood-recovery construction manager.

During the supervisor's 90-plus-minute discussion of the facilities issue on Monday, Holly Fields, whose grandfather is a Linn County custodian, and Joyce Sramek, a senior facilities worker for the county, both told the supervisors that they just had voted for Miller's re-election as auditor in November with the idea that oversight of the county's facilities was part of the auditor's job.

Now, just five months later, it didn't seem fair to turn that part of the auditor's job over to the man that Miller soundly defeated in the November election, Fields, Web marketing manager at Mount Mercy University, and Sramek said. Both said they felt that the supervisors were stealing their votes.

Fields added that she didn't understand why the supervisors were poised to hand the $100,000-plus-a-year job over to Fagerbakke without an open, competitive application process.

In response, Supervisor Brent Oleson said that he, for one, favored just such a competitive selection process, a decision the board may yet make on Wednesday.

He agreed with Supervisor Lu Barron, who argued that Fagerbakke had the experience and education to provide the county with the "quality and professional management" that the county's facilities operation needed. But Oleson said a competitive interview process would give him and the county's union employees a chance to ask Fagerbakke and other qualified applicants about some of their concerns.

Supervisor John Harris, the board's chairman, said Fagerbakke never gave up his title as the county's facilities manager when he took on his temporary assignment, though Miller has said he eliminated the job when Fagerbakke didn't return to it after three years.

Ron Stodola, a Linn County resident, noted that the supervisors were critical of Miller again Monday for hiring a consultant without a competitive process, and "now look what you're trying to do," he said in reference to making Fagerbakke the facilities director without taking other applications.

Without the job of facilities management, Auditor Miller will still manage about 20 employees in his other roles overseeing accounts and payroll, elections and land records and being the clerk of the Board of Supervisors.

Miller argued again on Monday that state law states that county auditors have "general custody and control" of the county courthouse, but the supervisors emphasized that control comes "at the direction of the board."

"He refuses to take direction from the board," Harris said of Miller. He noted that the boards of supervisors in Iowa's nine other most populous counties manage county facilities, not the auditor.

Supervisor Ben Rogers pointed to a report from Steve Tucker, the county's finance director, which concluded that Miller has provided "insufficient oversight and understanding of financial matters" in his office's management.

Supervisor Linda Langston provided a litany of examples of how she thought the county's facilities operation might be able to run more efficiently under new management.

The supervisors had been "hopeful" of finding a way to get along with Miller, Langston said, but she said the attempts had been "rebuffed" by Miller. Oleson said he has been most sympathetic to Miller among the supervisors, but Oleson said that the facilities issue had become like divorce where a relationship is "irreparably and irretrievably broken."

In the end, a defeated Miller called the board's move "to rip this away from me" a "political" decision best done quickly so he can spend more time in what he says is his role of "watchdog" over how the county spends its money.

Supervisor Barron said the decision was not political. She said nearly every year she's been on the board in the last 17 years the supervisors had talked about taking over the management of the county's facilities.