Graying of Workforce Troubles County Governments

Fairfax also offers employees a deferred retirement option program, or DROP, in which eligible workers "retire" but remain in their jobs for three years. They no longer accumulate pension time, and their annuity checks go into escrow accounts, where they earn interest. They receive the lump sum when their retirement begins in earnest. About 300 county employees, including at least two department heads, are in DROP.

Officials say the program's three-year window allows the county to get a better handle on who will leave and when. And, at least in theory, it costs the county nothing.

But DROPs have disastrous track records in some other jurisdictions, where officials overstated rates of return on pension money or failed to impose time limits, allowing workers to amass enormous retirement payouts. The practice has resulted in criminal charges in San Diego, Houston and Milwaukee.

Griffin said that although he is confident that no such abuses exist in Fairfax's program, he is concerned that DROP's record elsewhere leaves "an impression of abusing the public trust."

Localities are also trying, within the strictures of civil service laws, to develop a new generation of managerial talent. Last year Montgomery launched a management development program in which 40 low-level administrators, nominated by their departments, receive classroom training and a special project in a department other than their own, to broaden their experience.

Joe Adler, the county's human resources director, said participants are guaranteed only an interview for bigger jobs.

Fairfax is launching a program in which departments identify their most critical jobs and devise training and other strategies for developing pools of potential replacements.

"We have to replenish our intellectual capital and our managerial capital," said Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D-At Large).