RESULTS - ADMIN. SERVICES AND PERSONNEL COMMITTEE

     Among many other functions, the Administrative Services and Personnel Committee advises the Board of Commissioners on matters dealing primarily with the general governance of the county.  This includes the review and recommendation of appropriations for programs which are administered by 23 different departments and agencies.  Since all of these departments and agencies are not common among all counties, only eleven regressions were conducted.  Some of these include the merging of departments for the purpose of analysis.

Administrative Services and Personnel Committee - All Departments

        Overall, the budget for administrative services is very near the expected range. However, the R-Squared value is not statistically significant. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that administrative services as a general category are funded within the expected per capita range but that funding decisions within this category are independent of a county’s population.

    When the departments are examined individually, funding priorities become apparent within the category. The regressions by department reveal the following results:   

General Administration

    Administration - For most counties, the area of general administration includes the departments of the Controller, Purchasing, Financial Services, and Budgeting.  Since there is generally overlap in responsibilities among these departments, they are combined here for purposes of analysis.  All counties follow a general trend line except for Washtenaw and Muskegon, which are much greater than expected, as well as Berrien and Monroe, which are much less than expected. This implies that responsibilities are significantly different in these four counties.

Board of Commissioners

        Board of Commissioners - Funding for this department is largely determined by the salaries of the commissioners and the number of employees and not influenced by population characteristics. Counties with larger budgets per resident might have some administrative capabilities handled through their board offices. Ingham is within the expected range.

Buildings & Properties

        Buildings/ Properties - The fact that this budget is less than expected is somewhat surprising, given the fact that Ingham operates more buildings than most other counties. One reason for this might be the distribution of rent in Ingham County where the costs of building maintenance come out of the budgets for some departments. Other counties might or might not charge for rent in this manner. The evidence from the other departments supports this assertion - the departments in which rent is charged tend to have larger budgets than their counterparts in other counties.

County Clerk, Register of Deeds, & Elections

     Clerk/ Register of Deeds - The functions of these two departments vary significantly among the fifteen counties.  In Michigan, counties have the option of combining the two departments and five of the counties in this study have done so. Four of these five have lower budgets than the combined budgets of the counties which do not combine services.  Only Washtenaw has a higher budget level than other counties.  This implies that counties in which the two offices are combined have fewer expenses than counties in which the two offices are separate.

     This makes it difficult to examine the functions of one without including the other, as the collective functions of clerk, elections, register of deeds, and microfilm are quite similar among counties, although some clerks provide staffing functions for circuit court. But while the functions might be similar, the budget size exhibits significant variance on a per capita basis. A regression of the group reveals that Ingham spends approximately $4.17 per resident for these purposes, which is somewhat less than the average of $5.42. Due to the low R-Squared value (.4591), it is difficult to ascertain whether this is within the expected range or whether it is significantly less than expected.

County Attorney & Legal Services

        County Attorney - Eight of the counties contract for legal services while seven have up to five employees for this purpose. The variance in arrangements leads to a low R-Squared value. However, Ingham’s contract for legal services costs significantly less than expected. The contractual arrangement is a likely reason for this. According to the regressions, the contracted arrangements tend to cost less. However, this analysis does not take duties or quality of service into consideration.

Data Processing/ Management Information Systems

        Data Processing/ MIS - A general trend is that larger organizations tend to have larger information services departments. One reason is that computers and automated technologies tend to enhance an organization’s efficiency and larger organizations tend to invest in these technologies more often. This seems to hold true with Michigan counties as well. Larger counties tend to have larger MIS departments and somewhat smaller expenditures in many other departments while the reverse is true for the smaller counties. The high R-Squared value supports this argument. There is little variance between the expected level of funding for Ingham and the actual budget - funding is at the expected level. It is interesting to note that the number of employees in Ingham (13.0 FTE) is significantly fewer than the expected 16.33 FTE.

Drain Commissioner/ Public Works

        Drain/ Public Works - The total budget is much greater than the expected budget, although the low R-Squared value (.1031) indicates the budget for drains is independent of the number of residents in a county. A better dependent variable would be the number of drainage districts or the number of miles of drains in operation. Such information was not available for all counties. But if one assumes a correlation between an increase in population and an increase in the number of drainage districts, then Ingham’s drain budget should lag behind the expanding counties of Kent, Washtenaw, Kalamazoo, Ottawa, St. Clair, and Livingston. But as it is, Ingham’s drain budget is sufficiently greater than these counties. Although conclusions should not be reached with any degree of certainty, the fact that the total budget is triple its expected rate might warrant further investigation.

Economic Development

        Economic Development - Berrien ($1.89), Saginaw ($.80), and Ingham ($.96) are the only counties which fund this department at a rate greater than $.50 per resident. It is very clear that funding is based upon the preferences of each county. The low R-Squared outcome indicates that funding decisions are completely independent of a county’s population.

Equalization/ Property Description/ Tax Services

        Equalization - When population is used as the dependent variable as shown above, the equalization department receives relatively less funding in Ingham than in other counties. However, when the equalization-specific variables of number of parcels and total SEV are used, there are different outcomes including higher R-Squared values. This means that total SEV and number of parcels are better variables for comparing equalization departments and Ingham is neither higher nor lower than other counties in these categories. In the category of number of parcels, Ingham’s total budget is 20 percent higher than the expected amount ($678,482). In the category of total SEV, Ingham’s total budget is 2.7 percent below the expected amount ($594,108). As would be the case with other departments, interpretation of the results depends upon the variables examined.

Parks & Recreation

        Parks & Recreation - Ingham allocates fewer total resources than expected. This is largely due to the effect of special millages. When the general fund budget is used instead of the total budget, the effects of special millages and regional park authorities are removed from the model. Although this adjustment reduces the number of comparative counties to eleven, it removes wide variances, thereby increasing the regression’s explanatory power. In terms of general fund budget (not shown), Ingham is 41.6 percent above the expected level. The R-Squared for this is significant at .8569. However, further investigation into funding levels is probably not warranted for two reasons. First, the method of statistical selection is questionable in this case. Second, the nature of the expenses of purchasing and developing parks is such that large expenses tend to be covered over the period of a few short years. This department does not have the same year-to-year stability that the other departments tend to exhibit. Therefore, a single-year analysis is insufficient for this department.

Personnel and Human Resources

        Personnel/ Human Resources - This department exhibits the characteristics that one would expect of all centralized services. Namely, that it be directly related to the overall size of the organization. There is little variance between the cost per resident of the larger counties and the cost per resident of the smaller counties. Ingham’s funding level is within the expected range.

Treasurer

        Treasurer - Ingham has two fewer employees than expected and a budget of $80,000 less than expected. Since the duties of a treasurer are relatively common among all counties, it is likely that the Ingham treasurer operates more efficiently than his counterpart in other counties.