Voter's Pipeline; Interview with Margaret Grier

And the human services agency of Orange County is the largest agency of county government and a super agency employs more than 20 700 people and consolidate social services public health and mental health services under one administrator in our studio today as the director of the human services agency Margaret Greer who has the responsibility of managing all these complex social programs. And now here you are. Jim Cooper. One of the most interesting and often controversial personalities in Orange County government is Margaret Greer director of the human services agency. She brings to this job an experience record dating back 31 years of working for the county philosophy and social services public health and mental health. I have great importance on the quality of service being provided in these three areas. I'm going to ask her about her views and priorities for the agency today. The director of the human services agency position she's held since 1978. Prior to her appointment director she was a cheap probation officer for Orange County. She started working for the county 1049 as a social case worker for the

Department of Social Services. She's the chairwoman of the youth services planning committee and is on the board of directors of United Way. Last November she was appointed appointed by President elect Ronald Reagan to serve on the administration of justice task force. And there were many other advisory boards and other boards that you are interested in Margaret that are not on here. I think it might be interesting for the people who are listening to the nor the scope of the agency and you can correct me if any of my figures are off. But your budget is one hundred ninety one million dollars. That's about right. You have twenty eight hundred people working for you. Correct. You have the three main departments the mental health public health and social services. And these also include such things as adult social services children's services financial aid drug abuse. Health services juvenile court public administrator Public Guardian in all of the areas of public health that you have department head.

No no I think the information you have there goes back about a year and a half. I sat easily in a shed on the ass when it went to administrator and Public Guardian are now the heart of the Community Services Agency. That change was made in June of 1979 but the others are in there you know they don't go hard. Yes your record is an independent part of this period. Couric And we serve the court in the dependency area in dealing with the news neglected children so you do get involved with a juvenile Crow Yes and you're very much involved with it. I think of these four regional directors who report to you plus the other three department heads plusher administer the department head in other words you have eight department heads reporting to you. That's correct and I was thinking if this were a private corporation we'd have to call the Congress. Rather that's where we could be president of the Congress. Because of so many disparate services apparently this bad services have to take place within your department. So let's talk a little bit about what the grand jury has criticized the whole philosophy of in the first place is this idea of coalescing all of these

agencies under one head with not your idea. You are not the first director it was conceived in 1976 in the 1978 when David O'Donnell left you became the director so you walked into something that was created not of your own. Divine and That's correct yeah. The grand jury's been critical about the last grand jury has even raised the question whether that was a good idea in the first place. So having had that job for two years and being brutally frank and objective rather your view of that. Well I think you know that the concept is not new. It's been tried many places across the country been tried in the state and federal government in a small scale on a small scale it's even been tried in Orange County 10 years ago and that was called a community service project. The concept is sound the concept is workable. And in my view the concept is working in Orange County but not for capacity and not to the extent that I and others would like to see. So and you have to remember that prior to

1976. There was a community group a committee from citizens who were put together to look at the feasibility and the workability of this whole concept and they concluded unanimously that it was a good idea. Then they had the apartment had group and I was part of the department head group as were in nearly all the other service oriented department heads in it and with the exception of one department had they were all unanimous in support and wanted to be part of it and I was the only department head who said I think it's a wonderful idea but I don't want to be part of it. Then they had an implementation team and the implementation team was made up of a group of Public Citizens and the governmental group put together the actually working of it. And so many many years of practice then actually looking at it went into this and they studied it statewide they studied it nationwide they looked at some of the same kinds of organisations that did not work and have never run state back east it took 8 years to get it implemented and obviously that's too

wrong. The major difference between the way the grand jury and others have looked at it is they view it as an umbrella agency which means just another layer of government. That is not the way it was planned. That's not the way we are implementing it and that's not the way it can work. It has to be an integrated single department serving the needs of the client and looking at all the needs of each client. Giving a multi disciplined approach out in their own communities to the maximum degree possible. That's not an umbrella agency that's not an extra layer. It's a combining in a meshing of those people who are professionals in a variety of social services together. When a new person joins your agency he read this simple girl I'm going to share with our audience. The goal is to facilitate the resolution of an individual or a family's health social or financial problems in a coordinated and cost effective manner. So I think I'd like to ask you a bit about that. Let's take a typical family that go through one of the four regional centers.

Yeah. This family Roxanne in has a multiplicity of problems because I think it's fair to say that when one friend when families have problems they don't just have one problem like a child or correct financial need or mental health either how they come they seem to come in bundles. That's true. So. What is the test as to whether you are whether you can see it delivering the services assuming that. But the question is do you deliver services more efficiently than you did before. I think that is not a fair question that we have the factory or might that there are you delivering services more efficiently than you did before. Actually what we're doing is saying that when the client comes and use me as an example if I go into ask for public assistance and it's because my husband is ailing and we have no income and I have small children so I'm applying for Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The same time the interviewer finds out that I might also have a drinking problem developed because my

husband became ill. There was worry about credit and bail. No way to pay them. And reluctance to come in and ask for assistance. Charity is many people think of it and if someone doesn't pick that up at the same level instead of referring me to another agency or a different author you might have to get in your car and drive to another that town right now you can get someone brought in to deal with that issue at the same time that the whole needs of the family and not just the parent or the child but the whole family can be looked at and dealt with in what we call a case management form where you get as many services as are needed. Not any that are not needed when we're not just pouring on services to people without the need. That way you don't lose them when they get referred. That way you get an integrated and comprehensive approach to dealing with that family and they don't feel they are being put into little segments will boxes separated. So in addition to having these three large agencies coalesced under one department you're saying this idea of I think you called co-location. A

little regional centers co-location means that you can walk into that door and get all your services there. That's right. But you're entitled to it. Now I need to point out so that I don't mislead you or anyone else that at this point that is the goal but we do not have all of those services. Every one of the regions as of this point in history we are working toward that and we've made significant progress in the North County and in east central county which is Santa and orange Philip only settled in where you had the pilot. That's correct and much great progress in West but South County still because it's a larger size and of course we have much lower caseload there and additionally we're having a problem finding space to co-locate spaces become very expensive in Orange County but the Core Location is it's still going on the central. It is also functioning where now North County and west county north and west. Yes. Now we don't have medical clinics in every one yet but that's the thing we're now that's our first priority in the next few months.

This is good for the gander and I'm sure you're very familiar with this. But that had to do with a test taken by both a grand jury and by the Arthur Young company and they say significant. This is from the the grand jury report of 1990. A significant proportion of the employees 47 percent believe that the quality of service had deteriorated since the formation of the agency. While 40 percent believe no significant changes occurred and only 12 percent believe improvement had been shown in other words 87 percent of the agency employees believe that service is the same or has deteriorated since the formation of the agency. Would you respond to that. Yes I think that service has deteriorated only and to the extent that we've had budget cuts. Actually the quality of service I think has improved. We found some staff who did not have significant workload expectations who rarely saw clients for patients. And that's pretty hard to for me to explain that you could have a deterioration of service if you're not seeing anyone. If you suddenly start seeing clients assuming your staff are qualified it has to improve.

Now it is true that we had significant budget cuts after Proposition 13. Those were mostly in the child abuse and child protective services area. We did not have significant cuts in the rest of the budget until last year when we did take some last leave this year in the mental health area and in the activity center which we had to close because we had to take a budget cut there. There has been a drop in and we're trying to make that up now. We're also looking for funds so we can reopen those sometime this spring. So to that degree we have had some. Lessening of the amount of service. My view though is that we now have a goal oriented staff who have workload expectations and monitoring and the quality I think is improving steadily. But talk a bit about money on the federal level. You hear about programs like CDs being cut back revenue sharing being cut back alley a money disappearing for different programs that were funded and really. The whole mood the climate of the country is in balance the budget. The Reagan administration has pledged to

cut back on spending. And then if you go to Sacramento where they have to cut eight hundred million dollars out of a twenty three point nine billion dollar budget you see what a desperate financial plight the state is in the bailout money is gone. So let's talk about hard dollars. In other words it seems to me you've got the money you've got to have money to do your job and you have to have people to do your job. That's correct and what happened to the money in the people who get these cuts. Well that's not a part of the problem we have with service levels. We know that we're in inflationary times so that costs more to do everything. We have less money coming in and at the same time we have an increasing workload Orange County is an urban area. It's growing in population as we know it's 1.9 million I think the paper said this morning. So we are in a real crunch. Add to that the fact that the general public use human services as one of the areas they want to see significant cuts in because they think of us all as giving away welfare. So that means we have to be better managers that that means we have to hire better staff. We

have to change priorities and workloads and get the most out of what we do have. Orange County and Human Services Agency has only about 5 percent county tax dollars in our budget. That means we will be impacted more than the others with state and federal cutbacks. That is the challenge we face because we do care about people. We have to make sure the client comes first. The community comes first and employees and. Bureaucrats and administrators come second or last. And that's not always easily interpreted to staff who. Are concerned about workloads and they are busy looking for better benefits more benefits and are aggressively pursuing those all the time. So we are in a crunch. Does it bother you that you're going to be facing some pretty tough cuts. I mean would you say that's inevitable that there are going to be some cuts. I mean are you gearing for are you prepared we are in fact we are preparing before next year. The information we're getting and we're going to be trying to set up special meetings with the auditor controller and with the county administrative officer after the first of the year. So as

we're hearing that even orange county not just HSA but the entire Orange County picture might be quite different because we might be exceeding our proposition for maximum. So we might have to cut back the current fiscal year and not even wait til next fiscal year. So it is yet a serious problem and yes we are concerned and we're trying to plan for those contingencies. You run such an enormous agency Twenty eight hundred people one hundred ninety one million dollars a third of the people in the county. The third of the dollars from the county. You have a management there's a tremendous management problem. I mean anyone going into that job it's true. One of the interesting things about knowing you and talking to you is that there are very few people who are passive or noncommittal about Margaret Greer. It's true. People are very fond of you and have great regard for you where people don't like Margaret Greer from let me read a quote here from the grand jury. This is another way to put strong leadership is necessary. They're talking about the human services agency strong leadership is necessary but the director's style of

leadership that negative affects on both employee morale and their perception of how well services are rendered. During numerous employee interviews conducted by Arthur Young and Comey the agency director style with frequently criticized using such terms that confronted management. Lack of trust Raca participation. Consequently many of the same criticisms were voiced by employees and the employees who appeared before the grand jury. Would you react to that please. Yes I think the problem with that was taken and then the time frame is important. There's that was actually done in November of 1999 and we still had some of the people in the agency who were losing their own roles their roles were changing dramatically in terms of power and authority and control. And it's understandable that people morale would suffer from that. It was one of the things that I discussed with the Board of Supervisors which is a very obvious fact for any manager. It's an obvious fact for anyone in any kind of business that when you make any great changes the fear of the unknown the fear of how it's going to affect me

and my role affects everyone until they know what's going to happen. And some of those changes were not to the liking of some of the staff at that time. So it's understandable. And I did tell the board in advance that they could expect morale to take a drop. They can expect people to leave to go elsewhere and make spec could expect lots of resistance to the idea which is of course exactly what happened. Currently the same time though I think it's important to note that that was November before we had a regional managers on board which were fully implemented only last March that it's only been going since then. And when the first preliminary report came out I pointed out to the company and the grand jury that they had not interviewed any of those people at all and time didn't permit them to go back and do that. They are now the grand jury is currently in the process of interviewing those people and I think you'll find that the morale has significantly improved at the management level because those people are now able to

have some impact and when they talk about management style in front of management what is that. I don't really know what that is and the Arthur Young company would have explained that to you and you would know and as a matter of fact I offered them the opportunity when it seemed that I was going to be the focus of the study rather than the services that maybe they should hire assigned one two or three of their people to just follow me around daily for weeks long as they wanted to form their own impression. And they of course decided not to do that. But you can. It is true that I insist that people give the county taxpayers for a measure. It is true that I insist that when you're accepting a salary for a job description for which you applied and when you applied you said you could change the world overnight and do everything wonderful and do it energetically and do it well. That when they get on the job suddenly a lot of things are too difficult for us showing up. So it is true that I am insist that people give for measure and that they be held accountable for our work product and for the

effectiveness of their services. Some people have said it has been your critics that you argue tend to be too dictatorial to autocratic. Heavy handed words like that how do you respond to that. I think there have been occasions when that may have been true but that's usually after. Hundreds of hours of crying the other way we do participatory management in our agency and an interesting commentary that amuses and interests me and the staff the top staff are all asking me to be more directive. They're saying you know give us more direction make some of these decisions let's move on. And what opposite of what the other criticism may have been actually right ends because I usually try to get people to resolve these things if they can between themselves at a lower level. If they can't then they come to me and I can make a decision. And if they don't when reasonable time that I may have to say we've spent enough time on this issue it's time now to make a decision. We hear expressions now called loose and laid back and we hear expressions like autocratic between the two. Where would you put yourself.

Ron Lewis are laid back. I'm not emotionally not a dog but you know I work hard every day. I try to plan my time so it's highly productive. I schedule myself fairly tightly daily and I insist on performance from myself and I probably over expect from subordinates. You made a lot of bangs and you overeat back on yourself. Yes I do and I don't demand on yourself. It's not only my expectations even if I don't make it a whole lot better than most of the staff. But but you would say that you tend would tend to be pretty demanding that the people that work for you. Yeah that a fair that's a fair statement. And I think that in the kind of business we're in and in the era we're in that to do less is irresponsible. I think that we have clients who are in pain incredible trouble you just. Filmed something on suicide prevention to deal with those things daily. And if you're going to deal with that kind of client population and serve the public then you have to have the very finest quality staff you can get the most dedicated the most responsible. Those with

a high sense of integrity and who put the client in a community before they put their own convenience on the job. And that means you really have a very high expectation because it's a pain producing thing for the client and you can't afford to take a lackadaisical approach. Add to that the fact that taxpayers are tired of paying the public anyway. Then we better be demonstrating every day that we're hardworking competent caring professional people. Have you changed any of your management style to meet some of the criticism that has taken place and if could you explain some of that that might well actually we do since were the regional managers have come on board they meet separately as a group to go over any issues they have between them. Those are held every Monday afternoon as part of the agenda and they publish an agenda. They include the central staff who are also part of top management. As you pointed out we have nine people reporting to me which is to largest fan of control and it was done deliberately to give them direct input while they were in the formative

period and down the track it's my hope that we can put a cap over the regions so that there can be a more coordinated effect. But right now we wanted them to get out and show their imaginative imaginative creative efforts in their communities and they are a little different. Each one of them the regional directors. Yes. And then we have the central staff and we all meet as a group on Wednesdays and with the brown bag lunch. You know that's an informal group with no agenda where I just go out and tell staff I'll be on site I'll be sitting in a room such and so if you want to come chat with me feel free to come do that and know any issues OK and I'll respond that's the brown bag. Yeah. And what the when the event that's a top management group with the regional managers and central staff where we make the major decisions on policy and on program on budget personnel matters. And it's done as a team. I don't just sit there and say here's the word folks. This is the dictation for the day. That that is not the way I don't have somebody bucks you Margaret and say I think you're wrong.

I think this is the right way to do it. Can it get by with that. Yes. Fact I encourage that. And they can show you of some that maybe they think you're wrong and what they said more times than not I change and go with their way because I am probably the least knowledgeable person in program in some of the key areas. And if any of those people who are the key people even they don't have to be key people say you're wrong you better believe I'm going to be listening because I do not want to do anything that stupid or counterproductive to the value to have people refer to you as controversial frequently wrote that initially. And I'd have to say not a disaster about it but you also have to get use to those things. And there's no point in letting a lot of things bother you. You can't change them then adjust. And I've decided I can't change that so I might as well adjust. I think another of modern expression we have. They say somebody is a mellow. You've been with the county now 31 years. Yeah there's the migrant group today a little more mellowed

mellowed out I think the young people say. Then the ride would give say 10 15 years and yes more than 10 or 15 years ago I think that they're true. And I think so. I probably work with a great intensity as I did then but probably a better perspective and perspective comes with broaden experience and more experience I think and I think that has I do have that advantage I think you have survived about seven different boards of supervisors I use the word survive let's say you've endured through. About seven different boards of supervisors along before anyone heard of the feminist movement or the women's movement. You know we're. Making it up in the world that was very much dominated by men that you know I drank of Orange County. And when you wouldn't find a department head that with a woman you do you regard what you're doing as having some some value to the feminist or the women's movement or do you not think about that.

I tend not to think of that mostly because I tend to think of myself as a hard working county employee and I don't think of myself. As a feminist but I think it probably encourages other women who may think in those terms to feel that if I could do what I've done and survive some of the controversy you know some of the efforts to get rid of me over the years that perhaps they can do likewise. I think of the slogan by you with us we're number two that we have to try harder. How do you have to try harder and maybe be a little more aggressive because you are a woman who not only survive in this but they continue to move up the ladder to one of the key positions in the world. Yeah a fair statement I think so but I think that it's also part of my own temperament. I happened when really I'm from and I have I happen to believe in hard work. I happen to believe in doing more than you have to. I believe that you don't have to be asked to do certain things that you should see them and do them. I don't think you do just what you're told to do more than what you have to do. And you and I think that's paid off. I think it's that

recognition that probably got me where I am. Versus my feeling that I had a hard work ethic. I think so. And you want others around you to work hard. That's right. Even if they disagree with Margaret Greer. Correct. I'd like to show our viewers a very nice headline they won't see this in your daily newspapers but this is. The United Way and United Way. Just recently came up with 10 billion three hundred twenty five thousand dollars. Now that's the biggest in the history of Orange County and it's saying that private agencies are trying to do a lot of the things that are doing. I think our viewers have to know that we're comparing 10 million dollars the best we've ever had with your one hundred and ninety one million dollars to do what you do so how do you interface with these. Well one of the reason that I appreciated being on the United Way board and I'm now on the allocations Committee is because I believe very strongly that the public and private sector must work together in dealing with social problems. The private sector can do much of the effort that we can do in the

front end of the system in prevention in the early intervention in the family type problem. And they often cannot deal with and do not want to deal with the more serious problems which is probably the right place for the public sector to be involved. So you think that where they are the agency that they're running on the private financing is the best way for them to be. Oh and I strongly support them in fact. We have a little project that we started about a year ago because of budget cutbacks. And because I do believe in the private sector doing as much as possible in the public sector doing as little as possible. I'd like to see government do less. We started a project to get some of the best private agency over some of our child protective services cases and it's worked very very well and they've been tremendously helpful and they do a high quality job. Are we going to get some help for the Southeast Asian special for the southeast. Sincerely hope. Well we're working on that. Routinely priority

high priority for several reasons. Number one in April we expect that the federal government will expect the county to pick up some of the costs. Secondly the special effort for Refugees is alienating some of the other minorities and we want to deal with that issue a product. Norman have a very interesting person in the big job that you have. Thank you very much for being with us. Thank you Jim. Next week we'll be looking at another problem in Orange County another serious matter that had to do with the incidence of suicide and what all it can do about it. I'm Jim Cooper thanks for being with us.