On paper, Nassau County's budget mess is less imposing than the financial blowouts faced by several Long Island municipalities in the early 1990s. What's causing the general quagmire is the near-random staff reductions, departmental mergers and other quick-fix schemes of the last decade which have left some offices unable to function with current resources. It's as if the entire civil service had been sent to the wrong floor. Fortunately, this type of crisis offers spectacular opportunity for long-overdue civil service reform.

As with other county offices, the civil service Department and its governing commission appear to have lost direction. High-scoring applicants have been strung along for months while Civil Service officials promise placements that never come. Delays in hiring approvals are commonplace, even in non-controversial appointments such as teenaged workers vital to the operations of many of our local libraries. There are the usual complaints that many civil service titles and job descriptions are outdated (especially for technology positions), restricting both flexibility and efforts to improve service.

We can create a civil service based on quality delivery of services, efficiency and management-labor cooperation.

This type of change needs both county leaders and labor to take risks. In Nassau, both elected officials and union officials are in the same boat. Nassau's urbanizing population requires more, not fewer, services, despite greatly limited resources.

In 1995, the South Huntington Water District in Suffolk County received permission to radically overhaul their civil service field workers. They replaced the myriad of hierarchical job categories with exactly two job descriptions, Worker I and II. Employees were trained in basic operations of each division and were rotated regularly so that they became familiar with all parts of the operation. In-house rivalries disappeared, burnout was reduced and morale shot up.

Louisville has replaced its Nassau-style top-down management structure with problem-solving teams made up of workers and managers. Indianapolis and Madison, Wisconsin try to define what citizens need and structure staff around those needs based on skills and experience, regardless of outdated job titles. These local governments and hundreds more are creating cultures of innovation and excellence from the dust of the traditional bureaucracy.

With increased trust, reform often helps replace traditional adversarial contract negotiations with more cooperative bargaining situations. In 1992, the collective bargaining agreement between upstate Ulstar County's government and its unionized workers took two years to negotiate. In 1995, after Ulster's joint labor-management committee became fully operational, the contract took only two days to negotiate.

Nassau has outgrown its old-time machine politics and its antiquated civil service system. If the county won't act, the towns of Oyster Bay and North Hempstead are empowered to create their own civil services which would be smaller, more flexible and more in tune with local needs. Excellent service to the public starts with the staff, and the staff starts with the civil service system.