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Escambia Commission Considers Search Firm To Find Next Permanent County Administrator
January 17, 2022
The Escambia County Commission in is expected to move forward this week with hiring a search firm to find the county’s next administrator.
After the commission terminated Janice Gilley from the position in June 2021, deputy administrator Wes Moreno was named interim and had remained in the position. Commissioners decided in July 2021 not to hurry in finding a permanent replacement.
The county has now advertised for a search firm to assist with the recruitment of a permanent county administrator, and five proposals were received. One of those proposals was tossed because it was addressed to a county other than Escambia.
A committee reviewed the remaining four proposals and recommended Gov HR USA to be the most responsive.
On Tuesday, the commission will vote on their $22,500 proposal, along with an extra $10,000 for the search firm, consultant travel, additional advertisements and other related costs.
The Illinois company, according to their proposal, has conducted over 250 top manager level recruitments such as county administrators and city managers. The firm offered a timeline recommendation that has a new Escambia County administrator named within 14 weeks.
If Escambia County hires the GovHR recommended candidate and that person leaves within the first 12 months, Gov HR will conduct another recruitment at cost.
Comments
6 Responses to “Escambia Commission Considers Search Firm To Find Next Permanent County Administrator”
Melissa- you are EXACTLY on point with your facts; however, you don’t even scratch the surface of what occured during her watch or at her direction. There was the perfect storm between the administrator, the head of HR and SEVERAL directors; enough to actually land them all serious jail time, but the county has a LONG HISTORY of protecting themselves by just making the problem/ person go away and count on the fact that none of us will remember or ask questions ( where did the $5,000,000 go that was granted to ECAT for the covid outbreak?) And to Susie- preach on!
Mr. Lewis, while I can’t speak for the reasons any of the commissioners had in mind when they terminated Ms. Gilley, the actions I witnessed and offered public proof of during her 2 years as administrator included but were not limited to the following: brazen violations of due process; refusal to fulfill public records; built an unwieldy bureaucracy willing to lie and leak protected documents to the press; broke bargaining law during contract negotiations; assisted in disappearing paperwork on official HR complaints; subverted government procurement law as stated in the state administrative code; brought fake investigations against County employees; and railroaded first responders with bogus criminal charges. That’s just the short list, for your convenience.
We need a search firm to find some decent County Commissioners. That’s what we really need. While we’re at it, we should also find an Administrator who truly cares about this County and is not hired on the basis of how well he or she kisses the Commissioner’s hind quarters.
MR. MORENO MUST BE DOING JOB RIGHT SO COMMISSIONERS NEED TO FIND SOMEONE TO DO WHAT THEY WANT !!
The BCC hired the Florida Association of Counties to conduct the last search. It weeded out the unqualified and underqualified and presented a short list of its top recommendations. The commissioners decided to engage in a political patronage game and that is how Janet Gilley ended up with the job. She’s a talented person but nothing in her background even hints at prior executive leadership experience. She’s much more qualified to be a commissioner as she once was before and perhaps she will run in 2024. The BCC refused to say why they were terminating Gilley but Commissioner Barry made a statement about not wanting to wave dirty laundry in public. I assume he was referring to his dirty laundry and not to anything that Gilley may have been falsely accused in secret of having then and then fired after a show trial where the BCC ignored the very strong report on what she had done in her first two years of office. Later, the candidate ranked the highest by the Florida Association of Counties was hired by Okaloosa County where he now works. An obvious option would be to offer him the job.
Sounds like what Escambia County is going to end up with is another lifelong bureaucrat. I find it doubtful they will last or do what the people of the county need.