By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 24, 2006; A01
Lt. George Robbins got the urgent e-mail in late July. The office that keeps track of cars for the Fairfax County Fire Department wanted to know why the mileage was low on an investigator's GMC Safari van. Couldn't the guy drive it more?
Robbins came up with this solution: Have the investigator, who lives near department headquarters, swap county-issued cars with a co-worker who drives about 35 miles round trip from Prince William County.
From homeless-outreach workers to zoning inspectors, Fairfax employees are driving hundreds of vehicles across the county -- or are swapping cars with those who drive more -- simply to run up the odometers. They know that if they don't use their cars, they could lose them.
Of all the perks of public service, few are more treasured than the government car. So when the county established 4,500 miles as the annual minimum to determine whether a vehicle could be weeded from its fleet to save money, many employees and managers got creative. Their efforts -- heightened even as gasoline prices soared this year -- are documented in hundreds of
e-mails and memos obtained by The Washington Post under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
The e-mails show that, in the bureaucracy that serves Fairfax's 1.1 million residents, a change in policy can have unintended results.
Apparently ignored in the effort to keep cars were potential issues of wasted time and gasoline, and wear and tear on the vehicles. And the elaborate strategies devised by employees to hold on to their vehicles often escape the notice of the county, which does not track where a car goes or why.
The county auditor first noticed in 2004 that a large number of official vehicles were parked for long stretches in a garage at county headquarters. The county maintained 3,500 sedans, trucks and heavy-equipment vehicles, or about one vehicle for every three employees.
Today, the average sedan costs taxpayers about $20,000 and lasts about six years. Add in $1,200 in annual maintenance. And gas: 9 million gallons a year for trips countywide.
After an audit, the County Board of Supervisors saw a way to save millions of dollars.
Told about the e-mails last week, Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said he was not pleased: "For this to work, we need to stay flexible, but those who play games must be disciplined." He was out of town last week but released that statement through his staff.
Employees were told to refer any query from The Post about the issue to the Office of Public Affairs and would not comment.
To eliminate unneeded cars, the county established a minimum annual mileage -- 4,500 -- and told its 11,500 employees and supervisors that any cars with odometers that did not meet that figure would be taken away. There would be exceptions -- for firefighters and police and workers with sensitive missions transporting clients. But the driver of a car with low mileage would have to justify its place in the fleet.
Last week, board members were surprised to learn that just 11 vehicles were turned in this year and demanded that the minimum annual mileage be pushed to 5,000.
"I understand the difficulty in getting miles when you live so close," reads the Aug. 1 e-mail that vehicle coordinator Ben Coffman sent to Robbins. "There are only so many places you can drive to on a given day! We need to get around 500 miles a month to keep above the minimum . . . a few missed days of driving (going to a class, leave, etc.) could drop your mileage below the minimum." Fire investigators and some other employees are allowed to take their county cars home.
Tricia Rodgers, a therapist for the homeless, got her warning Feb. 15 from her supervisor on the Community Services Board.
"We need to think about scheduling with Tricia to use her vehicle for everything we can think of, so she won't lose it," James Van Cooper, director of residential mental-health services, wrote in an e-mail to Rodgers.
Since 2004, the minimum has helped the county eliminate 160 vehicles. That is out of 900 the county considered "in play" that were not assigned to police, firefighters and others who warranted an exception. But the possibility that cars have been accruing hundreds of unnecessary miles in an attempt to thwart the system irritates some officials.
"This should be like anything in government: If you don't use it, you lose it," said Supervisor Elaine N. McConnell (R-Springfield). "With the cost of cars and gas. . . . You know, none of us get cars."
Deputy County Executive Edward L. Long Jr., who oversees the fleet, said it would surprise him if supervisors encouraged workers to add miles just to keep their cars. "I just can't believe anybody would say, 'Just go out and drive your car to put mileage on it so you don't lose it,' " he said.
But James P. Zook, the planning director, made clear in a series of e-mails that he wanted to protect some low-mileage cars, including the Toyota Prius assigned to him.
Zook did not return several phone calls. In an August request to the Department of Vehicle Services for an exception, he noted that zoning inspectors must canvass 399 square miles and have faced an increased workload because of a building boom. He also said his inspectors need their cars to make frequent visits and that mileage might not reflect a car's heavy use.
In some other departments, e-mails and memos show that workers are rotating cars to even out the mileage, much as the fire inspector did with the worker who lived in Prince William. Officials in several departments successfully appealed low mileage readings, saying that their vehicles' odometers were wrong.
Sheriff Stan G. Barry commiserated with Zook about the situation in an e-mail after a meeting of department chiefs in July.
"We . . . have to spend a considerable amount of management time figuring out how to rotate vehicles constantly so that they get the required mileage," Barry wrote. "We don't end up saving the county any money because we still travel the same number of miles, we just have to keep shuffling vehicles around to meet the standard."
County spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald attributed the increased mileage to greater service demands from a growing population. "For some employees, they might be going to more locations than they used to," she said. Asked about shuffling cars, she allowed that the idea could be seen as an efficient method to even out mileage.
In the past, an agency would get a new car after the old one hit 90,000 miles and six years of use. Now a committee of managers vets every request for a new vehicle. When the county began trying to control the fleet, managers were asked to turn in underused cars voluntarily -- but too few came in. That eventually led to the minimum-mileage rule.
James D. Gorby, the county's director of vehicle services, acknowledged in an interview that the effort to weed the fleet has become a "very sensitive issue" in county government. Auditor John Adair, who first suggested that the fleet was bloated, said: "People in the county would rather you take their child than you take their vehicle from them."
Defending their efforts to keep cars, several managers said it makes no sense to scrap one that was not driven at least 4,500 miles last year given the possible alternative: an hour's drive in their own personal vehicle to the Government Center garage to get a pool car, an hour's drive back to the work location, and then another two hours there and back to return the car.
That is an extreme example. But Cenith Hall-Tibbs, manager of adult residential services for the Mount Vernon Mental Health Center, said that is how long it takes to drive from the center to the garage in western Fairfax and back. Her office runs group homes in Vienna, Springfield and the Route 1 area.
"It's a difficult problem for a county this size," Hall-Tibbs said. "From my perspective, vehicles we have, we need." Each group home has one car to take clients to medical appointments and elsewhere. Noting the size of Fairfax, she added, "If we were a small county, the motor pool would be a great solution."
