( Michael Laris / The Washington Post ) - David Rivas explains how he figured out the county was changing transmission fluid too often in its buses and wasting money. Montgomery County is paying county employees who come up with innovative ways to save taxpayer dollars.
David Rivas pays attention to details. So when the bespectacled government mechanic heard something that didn’t add up in a recent class on bus maintenance, he dug into the three-inch-thick troubleshooting manual.
And there it was: Montgomery County, he figured out, had for years been changing transmission fluid twice as often as it should.
It was more than a passing revelation for Rivas, a father of three whose wife lost her job as the family was saving up to buy a house.
With his discovery, the 27-year-old worker found his way into a curiously lucrative cost-cutting effort by Maryland’s largest jurisdiction, which is encouraging employees to come up with ways to save money.
After they put their ideas into action, the county is letting employees share in the savings, with potential payouts in the thousands of dollars. It’s a way of giving frontline employees a voice in the way things work.
“The county’s been here for a long time, so a lot of people are, I guess you can say, stuck in the way of doing things,” Rivas said. “For me and my family, it’s time for me to step up. . . . There are so many different things I would like to do for them, and with them. I have to try to do as much as possible.”
So at his crew chief’s suggestion, Rivas shared his insight with a group of workers who had volunteered to scour Montgomery’s fleet operations for waste, one of five such groups across the county government.
Giving employees a little cut is a well-worn business strategy. But it remains touchy in the public sector, where in Montgomery County, for example, officials resort to bureaucratic euphemisms like “gainsharing” or “rewarding excellence.” After all, penny-pinching would seem to be part of every government worker’s job, and paying for it might be seen as an admission that the reality is otherwise.
But with governments at every level facing hard fiscal decisions, some officials are willing to pay their employees to find ways to save.
Last week, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) announced a supercharged suggestion box program for state employees, who were given two weeks to submit smart money-saving ideas. The winner gets $2,500.
In Montgomery, the workers in search of savings had been at it for months but hadn’t found anything on the scale of what Rivas uncovered.
So they asked him, “Do you have proof?”
When Rivas provided it, he said: “They basically told me, ‘You’re on the team now. Don’t go anywhere!’ ”
They ditched a PowerPoint presentation and decided to pitch the transmission fluid proposal and a number of others by acting out an episode of “The Price is Right.” The mechanic was David “Drew Carey” Rivas. Last month, county officials approved the ideas.
Once the savings are borne out, including the estimated $70,000 that won’t be spent on transmission fluid, each team member is slated to take home a $5,000 check from taxpayers. Rivas said his money will be headed straight for his family’s house fund.
Incentive programs like Montgomery’s have bipartisan appeal and offer a rare forum for agreement between labor leaders, who feel besieged in an era of government retrenchment, and free-marketeers who are keen to give officialdom a shove with capitalism’s invisible hand.
The Post MostMost-viewed stories, videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Loading...
Comments