By Eileen Buckley
Buffalo, NY – Erie County Executive Joel Giambra says it's time for the county to begin changing the way it does business and save taxpayer dollars.
Giambra says if he's going to continue pushing for government consolidation it must start internally. Trimming the costs of county government is the goal of several recommendations released Thursday.
A study by Lumsden and McCormick and the Center for Government Research examined ways to re-engineer County spending. Six recommendations were offered including the creation of a County Homeland Security Department by merging Emergency Services and Central Police Services once a new public safety campus is built downtown.
"The full merger will take place once the facility is up," Giambra said. "Both departments will be brought together. We are in the process re organ the two departments. That's one of the initiatives already underway."
County Comptroller Nancy Naples says other recommendations include centralized accounting and payroll consolidation. Naples says they are already implementing a recommendation to use corporate purchase cards for small purchases on a trial basis.
"But by using the purchase card for purchases up to $1,000 a piece instead of creating a purchase order for those purchases we can save over 15,000 purchase orders a year," Naples said.
The county is also implementing a recommendation to improve the purchase and maintenance of its vehicles. Naples says all the recommendations could save taxpayers a total of more than $4 million.
Giambra says they hope to conduct consolidations through attrition without the loss of jobs.
"But if it can't be done through attrition, we are going to have to do it the hard way, there may have to be layoffs," Giambra said. "We don't want to lay people off, but we have major budgetary issues to deal with."
Giambra says the recommendation will be implemented and won't sit on a shelf collecting dust.