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Several actions by the Salary Board at the commissioners' meeting this week highlighted changes that are being made in the structure of Lycoming County's court system since President Judge Eric Linhardt assumed that role earlier this year following the defeat of former Judge Nancy Butts on a retention vote.
The commissioners, Scot Metzger, Marc Sortman and Mark Mussina, along with Emily Snyder, of the Controller's Office, served as the Salary Board.
Actions taken by the board included: adding an administrator of probation and pre-trial services position to the TDA (Table of Distribution and Authorizations); removing a supervisor position in Adult Probation; adding a supervisor position in Juvenile Probation; removing a deputy chief position in Adult Probation; and removing deputy chief position from Juvenile Probation.
"The TDA changes are just a reflection of a significant time where we have spent the last several months, actually the last year, at looking at the structure of the courts," said Jennifer McConnell, Director of Court Services.
"I've been with the courts for 11 years, and we've always taken, when we had the opportunity, to look at restructuring or improving efficiencies and reducing our budgets. We've always done that. We were faced with an opportunity about this time last year, where we were able to look at the juvenile and adult probation offices. We talked with State officials, specifically with the Juvenile Court Judges Commission, and looked and talked with other counties how they have their probation offices structured," McConnell said.
The changes to the TDA were the result of the court's work in improving its efficiency while also cutting expenses.
"We're going to be naming one administrator overseeing both offices, and that person is going to be tasked with a higher level, more complex budget, organizational, managerial duties. Then there'll be two chiefs that will be overseeing both offices-one over the juvenile, one over the adult probation office-and they're going to be managing the day-to-day operations," McConnell said.
She noted that by combining the adult and the juvenile probation office, they'll be able to combine training resources, staffing, and shared resources.
"It'll give us an opportunity to focus on emerging adult, and that's ages 18 to 25, and just very generally speaking, the juvenile probation road has adopted well over a decade ago what they call JJSCS (Juvenile Justice Service Center System) and that's a strategy where they apply evidence-based practices to their case management. The adult probation office is actually statewide moving towards that initiative over the last several years, in fact, our funding is tied to it. If we don't do it, we actually lose a lot of state funding. So this will give us an opportunity, actually, to utilize the skills and the experience from the juvenile probation office and apply them to the adult probation office as we continue to apply evidence-based practices, programming, and processes in the adult world, like the juvenile world does," McConnell explained.
The commissioners, who have been stressing the need for the past year of getting the county on a better path financially, thanked the courts for making adjustments that were necessary while still staying in budget.
"Several management positions were eliminated. We were able to keep the salaries with some increases but at the same pay grades. So we're very thankful for the court's work with us to make these adjustments, but still stay within the budget," said Metzger.
"Also adding the supervisor's position to Juvenile Probation allows hands-on for juvenile issues going on. Judge Linhardt thought that was necessary and was very important going forward," he said.
"Financially we are obligated by the state of Pennsylvania to implement what they call, through the JJSCS, evidence-based practices...and that carries over to case planning, supervision to working with outside vendors who provide programming…there's a lot of obligations that we have to do based on state requirements, and in order to do that, you need someone trained in those areas who can also help coach and mentor the probation officers to assure that we're delivering the best supervision practices that the state is requiring. So this will allow us to better that," McConnell said.