The St. Mary’s County Commissioners are considering creating a department that would reorganize staff and department functions of multiple local government agencies under one “human services” agency.

 An Office of Human Services that would consolidate the planning and administration for state and local funding that would then be distributed to direct service providers in St. Mary’s County.

 In layman’s terms, the creation of the Office of Human Services would act as an umbrella organization to all of the local government agencies who deal with direct human service needs such as housing, employment, health and mental health, education and training, and transportation.

 The purpose of this interagency consolidation is to make the government more efficient and to provide enhanced, timely services to citizens by combining administrative and fiscal responsibilities of human service providers under one department.

 
John Savich

 “Currently the people who are in need are faced with a ‘silo system’ of human service agencies,” County Administrator John Savich said at this morning’s weekly commissioner meeting.

 “No longer do they have to go to one agency for one need and then have to go to another agency for another set of services. By integrating all of these services into one county office, people can have their needs better assessed and met.”

 The issue of cost is a huge concern with this interagency consolidation. Proponents say this would be negated by the formation of the Office of Human Services which would proactively search for grant money through the state and federal level. By determining the needs of its local constituents, the new county government office could tap into a multitude of grant monies available to the county.

 The local government pleads that this is beneficial because the new system will take advantage of economies of scale, and provide more effective and streamlined human services. Furthermore, with the expectation that future revenues for the county might be slim this would be a way to provide new and enhanced services more conveniently to its citizens while keeping costs down for running these various human service agencies.

 Basically, taxpayers would get more “bang for their buck” with this new integrated system.

 “Under this new system we can do business better and get more out of our dollar,” said Bennett Connelly, from the Local Management Board.