Compared to three other State counties, The Cuyahoga county Recorder's office has the most employees, pays the highest salaries and does the least amount of work. State auditor Mary Taylor says that if the recorder's office takes her advice they could save a bundle.
TAYLOR: In total the two recommendations could save a million dollars- reduce operations staff by 17 and reduce public outreach staff by 7.
Taylor compiled data from Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton and Lucas counties and compared the number of employees, their salaries and the efficiency of each employee. Taylor says when it comes to efficiency, Cuyahoga County isn't up to snuff - and she has the numbers to prove it. On average, employees in the Cuyahoga County Recorder's Office manage roughly half as many documents and have almost twice as many people - and what's more, their salaries are 20 percent higher.
TAYLOR: Families are living within reduced budgets and I believe they expect government to do the same and so when you see a situation where there is bloating staff, you have staff that's being paid nearly 20% more in average compensation than their similar position in another county I think it begs the question for taxpayers, is our money being wasted. here?
The performance audit was conducted at the request of the Cuyahoga county commissioners following the resignation of Recorder Patrick O'Malley. Since Taking Office in January 2007 Taylor claims she has released 50 performance audits, whose recommendations could result in a cost savings of 83 million dollars annually.
Gretchen Cuda, 90.3