Hillsborough administrator revamps leadership team

TAMPA -- Many Hillsborough County government employees will soon have new bosses.

Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean announced a reorganization of her top deputies Wednesday to department directors and other mid-level managers. The changes must still be approved by county commissioners next month.

Ostensibly, the effort is meant to show that top brass is facing cutbacks along with rank and file employees as the public demands property tax reductions. It doesn't look that way at first glance.

The upshot is that one chief deputy and three assistant county administrators are being replaced by six mini-administrators who will report directly to Bean and will oversee specific realms of county government.

Who's out: Wally Hill, former deputy county administrator, who was let go last month; Ken Griffin, an assistant county attorney who was recently banished to the Water Resource Services Department.

Who's up: Management and Budget Director Eric Johnson, Debt Management Director Mike Merrill, Public Information Officer Edith Stewart, and Strategic Management Initiative Officer Lucia Garsys, who each become administrators with titles too long for even the Internet.

Johnson and Merrill will keep their old duties and get some new ones, and an administrative assistant job gets shaved along the way, so Bean says the moves cut about $500,000 in salary and benefits costs.

Here's a copy of a memo from Bean to commissioners explaining the proposed changes, though it reads almost like government-speak satire. And for employees who were whispering in the hallways Wednesday wondering who their new bosses will be, here's a departmental flow chart.

-- Bill Varian, Times Staff Writer

Comments

[Terry]

The flow chart looks like Bean is circling the wagons....with all her protectors. Isn't it evaluation time in December? Can't wait to see this love fest.

[TerTry]

Don't you just love it when the Commish get's flustered. He doesn't mind dishing (and Norman) it but he can't take it.

chart ain't flowin'

yup, flow chart link is dead

Shell Game! Net benefit to taxpayers… nadda!