news-record.com

Hey wonks! You're gonna love this:

The North Carolina City and County Management Association has a free textbook online for those interested in learning more about the guts of local government in the state and how it works. The text is super accessible and easy to absorb for a typical high school education level. The book is actually intended for high school sophomores.

The chapter on counties, for example, starts out with basic topics but then goes into detail over more complex ideas-

The county manager directs the general operations of county government. He or she has the authority to hire and fire personnel in departments directly under the authority of the board of commissioners, but not those who are responsible to an independently elected official (sheriff, register of deeds) or work for the state personnel system or an independent board (education, elections, health, social services).

The county manager prepares a budget for the county and manages the county’s expenditures. He or she also reports to the board of commissioners on county government operations and on public problems facing the county. Like the city manager, discussed in Chapter 2, the county manager is typically a professional who has studied public administration and belongs to the International City/County Management Association (www.icma.org).

What's interesting here is that a number of those laid off in the county were working for public health and social services when County Manager Brenda Jones Fox made the call on those cuts. Though it's likely that the cuts eventually went before the respective boards governing the departments, it would be interesting to see if and how those boards played a role in what jobs would be cut.

What we do know is that department directors had a sheet on which they could prioritize positions and people based on experience, cross-training and other factors. From there, the layoffs were determined.