PJ Wendel
The Chautauqua County Finance Department is going through a reorganization process to become more streamlined.
County Executive PJ Wendel said the idea for the reorganization came out of a discussion with former legislator Chuck Nazzaro who worked in Finance at UPMC Chautauqua, “And one of the things we asked ourselves is, ‘Are we capturing enough revenue?’ Not looking at it as a money grab, but are we billing the right way and how many redundancies do we have, how many departments are billing, maybe not the same exact service we understand, but billing the same whether it’s Medicaid billing or private insurance billing, who’s doing that? Are we doing that in Mental Hygiene, are we also doing that in Public Health, and Social Services? So, we wanted to get a better understanding.”
Wendel said Finance Director Kitty Crow is leading the project. He emphasized that the reorganization doesn’t involve physically moving people or departments, nor does it result in a reduction in the workforce.
Wendel said the case that pushed him to go forward was when the Department of Mental Hygiene had 60% of its finance staff out on COVID leave, “Three out of five people in your fiscal department for 10 days, what do you do? That really prompted us to say, ‘Well, can people cross train? Can someone who works with Medicaid billing from another department be able to come over and handle some of this work? And we realized, yes.”
Wendel added they are working to make sure there are no issues with the union when it comes to cross-training, “Kitty (Crow) is working with HR and Deb Makowski to make sure everything is on the up and up. Tentatively, our union is looking at this right now and they don’t see any issues. There hasn’t been anything.”
Wendel said Crow looked at other models in county governments across New York state for the reorganization plan while adding elements specific to Chautauqua County.
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