Ask Mr. Answer Person: "Who does job performance reviews on county department heads?"

One of these things is not like the others

Brett e-mails Mr. Answer Person: " It's good to know (Decorah School Superintendent Mike) Haluska has a job performance review.  Who does job performance reviews on county department heads?"
 
Mr. Answer Person says: "Brett, did you ever watch "Sesame Street" as a kid?  You might have seen a segment on the show that used the song "One of These Things," a song written by Joe Raposo (one of my favorite composers) which had the lyrics "One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish my song?"  Sesame Street viewers would be shown several items and would have to guess which item which didn't belong.
 
Mr. Answer Person is strolling down Memory Lane because, in the case of the Decorah School District, City of Decorah and Winneshiek County job performance reviews, "One of these things is not like the other."  For both the Decorah School District and the City of Decorah, there's an elected board that oversees the job performance of an administrator--the Superintendent in the case of the school district, the City Administrator in the case of the city.  These chief administrators then handle job performance reviews for department heads, who in turn do performance reviews for other employees.
 
County government doesn't work that way.  There is no "County Administrator."  Department heads--some of them, anyway--are elected by voters.  So how does county government handle job performance reviews?  There are three different groups of county employees.  Those covered by union agreements receive pay raises based on the contracts their unions negotiate.  Elected county government department heads report to a Compensation Board which recommends what kind of pay raises those people get after doing what amounts to performance reviews of the jobs the department heads have done.  Elected department heads also report to the voters--if they're not doing a good job, the theory goes, they will be voted out of office.
 
There's a third category of county job performance review now.  A few years ago county supervisors created a Compensation Study and Committee.  The committee reviewed and rated position descriptions based on a compensation study by a human relations consultant.  Wages and salaries were adjusted to be fair and equitable for comparable position descriptions.  Unless duties and responsibilities change, employee compensation is adjusted by the county board's annual cost of living increase.

So the answer is that every county employee gets a job performance review--but there are three different ways this is handled for three different groups of employees.