CLAYBORN COUNTY, OHIO — At a Tuesday evening meeting attended by nine residents, two reporters, and the HVAC repairman who had not yet been paid, County Supervisor Dale Ruggles announced the formation of the Clayborn County Department of Operational Efficiency, a three-person task force charged with identifying government waste and reporting back by the second week of February. Ruggles, 61, said he was inspired by “what they’re doing up in Washington” and had already located what he believed to be a significant irregularity in the break-room coffee fund.
The fund, which currently sits at $84.50, is maintained by voluntary contribution from the seven employees of the county annex building. Ruggles described it at the meeting as “the sort of off-ledger account that, left unchecked, becomes a culture.” He did not specify a culture of what.
The Department of Operational Efficiency — which residents have already begun calling “the DOE,” to Ruggles’s visible frustration, as he had hoped for a different acronym — consists of Ruggles himself, his nephew Brayden, and a retired insurance adjuster named Lenora Whipp who volunteered on the grounds that she had “always wondered about the culvert situation.” None of the three were present for the HVAC discussion, which was moved to new business and then tabled.
“What we’re talking about is a top-to-bottom review of every line item in the county budget,” Ruggles told the room. “If it’s not earning its keep, it’s going out the door. I don’t care if it’s a stapler.” He then asked the county clerk whether the meeting was being recorded, and, upon being told it was, clarified that he did care about the stapler in particular, which had been a gift from his late father-in-law.
Dr. Evelyn Truitt, a municipal governance scholar at the Ohio Institute for Rural Administration, said efforts like Clayborn County’s are becoming more common in the current political climate. “We’re seeing a trickle-down phenomenon where county-level officials want to replicate federal rhetoric without the federal budget,” Truitt said. “The problem is that when your entire discretionary spending fits on a single sheet of paper, ‘cutting waste’ tends to mean eliminating the one thing someone’s grandmother liked.”
The first scheduled target of the efficiency review, beyond the coffee fund, is the annual $312 subscription to a regional water-rights newsletter that Ruggles described as “frankly, a luxury item.” The newsletter has been received by the county since 1987 and is read primarily by Lenora Whipp, who has now recused herself from that portion of the review.
Reached Wednesday morning at the Sunrise Café, where she was refilling coffee for two men discussing a third man not present, waitress Sharla Bemis offered a measured assessment of the new initiative. “Dale’s been wanting a task force for about eleven years,” she said. “He tried to start one for the Christmas parade and another one for the geese. This is just the one that finally took.”
Mrs. Peterson, who attended the meeting in her capacity as secretary of the Clayborn County Historical Society and in her other capacity as a person who attends every meeting, said she supported the general idea of reviewing government expenditures but had concerns about the scope. “He kept using the word ‘bloat,'” she said. “I looked around that room. I don’t know where he thinks the bloat is. Gene from the water department was wearing the same jacket he wore to my husband’s funeral in 2009.”
Supervisor Ruggles has declined to disclose a specific dollar target for the cuts, saying only that the figure will be “substantial” and “in keeping with the spirit of the moment.” Pressed by this reporter after the meeting, he estimated savings of “between four and six thousand dollars, potentially,” and then, after a pause, said “or three.”
Nephew Brayden Ruggles, 24, who was appointed to the task force on Tuesday and sworn in using a Bible that was later identified as a hymnal, said he is approaching the role with fresh eyes. “I don’t have a lot of preconceptions about how the county spends money,” he said. “I don’t really know what the county does, if I’m being honest. That’s why they picked me.” He is being paid a stipend of $40 per meeting.
Not all residents are enthusiastic. Gene Ollinger, the water-department employee referenced by Mrs. Peterson, said he had been informed his job was “under review” and would like to know by whom. “I’m the water department,” Ollinger said. “I’m not a department. I’m a guy. They can review me all they want, but if they review me out of a job, somebody else is going to have to go turn the valve at the Miller place, and I’ll tell you right now, nobody else knows which valve it is.”
The task force is scheduled to deliver its preliminary findings at the February 12th meeting, at which point the county will also consider a measure to increase the supervisor’s discretionary budget by $2,400 to cover what Ruggles described Tuesday as “administrative costs associated with the review process.” The coffee fund, as of press time, remained untouched, though a handwritten sign had appeared above it reading “Under Audit — Please Still Contribute.”