When is a hiring freeze not a hiring freeze? When it’s operated by the Vance County government.
The latest example came Monday night, when the Board of Commissioners did what it always does: approved County Manager Jerry Ayscue’s recommendation for additional hiring.
In this case, the commissioners are allowing two vacant jobs in the Social Services Department, two in the Fire Department and one in the Planning Department to be filled, as well as upgrading a part-time job with the Board of Elections to full time and adding a senior zoning post to the Planning Department.
We’re in no position to comment on the necessity of any of those jobs. Ayscue says they’re needed, and, like the commissioners, we tend to trust what the county manager says.
But we’ve had enough of this farce of a three-year hiring freeze.
Not only are vacancies filled with regularity, but the county continues to add jobs as the administration perceives a need, from human resources to zoning. Again, we’re not opposed to the additional staffers, who are doing valuable work, but you don’t expand the work force if you’re observing a hiring freeze.
By contrast, the city government, whose finances are in worse shape than the county’s, doesn’t have a hiring freeze. Sure, it has plenty of jobs frozen, from the Police Department to the Water Reclamation Facility, but when a vacancy occurs, City Manager Eric Williams has the power to see that it is filled as long as there‘s no increase in the budget.
Not so in the county government. Ayscue is authorized to fill jail vacancies without action by the commissioners, and he may fill vacancies created by promotions within a department. Those are changes the commissioners adopted in March 2004, and they’ve worked well.
Now it’s time to go all the way. The commissioners should drop any pretense of a hiring freeze that they do nothing to enforce and simply allow Ayscue to do his job: hire the people he needs to run the county government as efficiently as possible.