Trending
WARREN -- It's turning into an unhappy new year for county interim Human Resources Director Charles Leightner, who during an agenda workshop on Wednesday with Commissioners Denny Malloy and Mauro Cantalamessa, aired his grievances against Commissioner Niki Frenchko.
"The situation in Trumbull County is mind-boggling to me," Leightner said, noting he has only been in his position for 19 days. "I've never experienced a situation where the organization's culture is so stressful."
He said the Frenchko has been making unnecessary records requests without explanation and asking office staff to complete tasks that are not part of their jobs, putting an "unfair burden" on clerks, department heads and other staff. He said Frenchko then comes in and criticizes or threatens employees because they aren't getting their day-to-day work done.
In a human resources panel meeting in September, Leightner expressed similar opinions about Frenchko.
"The problem is I see nothing but criticism from that office all the time. Criticism and threats, hostility -- it's rampant," Leightner said Wednesday.
He reiterated that Frenchko accused him of assaulting her just a few days after he started as the human resources director.
Frenchko, who came in and out of the room several times -- but repeatedly declined an invitation to join the meeting -- was not present for most of Leightner's comments.
Later Wednesday, Frencko said the records request she made regarded justification for significant compensation time taken by one particular county employee and that the request took about 20 minutes to fill and was "not exactly overburdening." She denied seeking records back as far as 2007, a year that Leightner had mentioned when originally speaking about the records request.
With regard to Leightner's other comments about her, Frenchko said that "per advice of counsel," she would not make any public comment.
"And Charles Leightner, if he has a background in HR, should know better than to comment as well," she said.
In the more than two-and-a-half hour workshop meeting, Cantalamessa and Malloy, along with department heads, discussed several items dealing with procedure added to the agenda by Frenchko, including one to create a county administrator and budget administrator and another to eliminate the position of Trumbull County Transit Board administrator.
With regard to an item calling for the board to create a hiring policy and advertise all non-union positions for at least 30 days, Cantalamessa, Malloy and Leightner all seemed to agree that creating a ranking system for hiring could be productive. They also said, however, that the county's current policy of advertising positions for at least 15 days is sufficient, especially in cases where an employee is urgently needed.
Leightner said a recent staffing poll completed by county managers showed that about 56 open positions are considered to be in need of "urgent" hiring.
Frenchko later said she believes the posting should be 30 days, especially when doing national advertising. She said the agenda item also was meant to reflect a policy she wanted to rescind that read, "positions that have current personnel ready to assume that position will not be posted." She said today's agenda would reflect that change.
Cantalamessa and Malloy also agreed that department heads should develop standard operating procedures, including work flow charts and training manuals -- another item added by Frenchko -- but said that a March 1 deadline for first drafts was too soon.
Leightner agreed, saying, "I think this is a good proposal. It needs to be done. But I think there's no way it can be done by March."
Cantalamessa also stressed that county departments already have procedure policies in place.
Frenchko said that departments could use procedures from other counties as a framework to present by March or give an outline. She said that having policies in place ultimately will protect the county.
Cantalamessa and Malloy dismissed an item that would require all events on commissioners' schedules to be directly related to government business -- omitting events like golf outings, fundraisers, funerals or nonprofit events -- and would require certain details to be included for scheduled events.
"We're big boys. We make our own schedule. … There's no reason here for us to address this," Malloy said.
"Why is one commissioner making a policy for the other commissioners? We don't work for her," Cantalamessa said.
Items discussed at Wednesday's meeting will be up for a vote today.
"Tomorrow is going to be a marathon, bring popcorn," Malloy said Wednesday.
avugrincic@tribtoday.com