The Leelanau County board heard a presentation from John Amrhein, a governance educator with Michigan State University (MSU) Extension, on county finance structure at a committee of the whole session on Jan. 24.
Management of Leelanau County’s finances has been fraught with difficulties ever since the previous board of commissioners made the controversial decision to separate finance duties from the county clerk’s office and create a new finance department in May 2021.
Since January 2022, the county has gone through four finance department heads in short order – Jennifer Zywicki, Darcy Weaver, Jared Prince, and Sean Cowan. Since Cowan left on Oct. 20, the department has fallen under the leadership of former Suttons Bay treasurer Catherine Hartesvelt again.
Although Hartesvelt is only interim director, she has served as department head the longest. Prior to Cowan’s resignation, Hartesvelt six-month tenure between finance directors Prince and Cowan. Under Cowan, she was assistant finance director. The second longest-serving department head was Prince at about five months.
In hopes of stemming the bleeding of finance department personnel, the county board of commissioners sought out guidance from MSU Extension. In preparing his recommendations, Amrhein said he consulted with other Michigan counties who went through similar transitions where finance duties migrated across departments.
In these conversations with other governmental units – including Cheboygan, Crawford, Manistee, Roscommon, and Wexcord counties – Amrhein said he explored three options: maintaining the current structure, where the finance director reports to the county administrator; creating a chief financial officer (CFO) position; or having the finance director report directly to the county board.
In the process, however, Amrhein came upon a fourth option: replacing the finance director with a controller. If Leelanau County were to establish a controller position, the question of whether the finance department head should report to the administrator or the full board would be a moot point, as a county controller’s duties are governed by state statute.
In an MSU Extension article, Amrhein quotes an excerpt from the 2007 book Guide to Michigan County Government: “The controller statute, MCL 46.13b, was first adopted in 1927 and last amended in 1969 and still contains rather authoritative Potential concerns about switching to a county controller discussed in Amrhein’s article and at the Jan. 24 meeting are this “authoritative” power and the difficulty of dismissing the controller after creating the position. Amrhein said that a twothirds majority vote – five of seven county commissioners – would be needed to remove a controller.
“I think the common thread in those who really like the controller statute – there was some kind of situation at some point in their history, where – whether it was real or perceived on the part of those in county government – having some responsibilities vested in the controller and in the statute made a difference,” Amrhein explained.
When Cowan first showed an intention to leave in September 2023, it seemed to sound an alarm bell at the board level. Changes were necessary. On Sept. 29, board chairman Ty Wessell proposed a new structure where the position of finance director would be replaced by a CFO.
Wessell told the board that a CFO would report directly to the board of commissioners, whereas a finance director reports to County Administrator Deb Allen. A finance committee of three commissioners would also provide “guidance, role support, and engagement” to the CFO.
Ultimately, nothing has come of these recommendations so far besides the establishment of a finance committee and more meetings, as Cowan left before the transition to CFO could be completed.
The county board encouraged Amrhein to explore a CFO option as well, but Amrhein found that it was uncommon for county government. He only found precedent for it in four Michigan counties – Monroe, Wayne, Genesee, and Lapeer – which were “all larger counties,” he said.
Since this was just a committee of the whole meeting, the board of commissioners could take no action beyond gathering information about these four possible financial arrangements from Amrhein.
Another point cited by Cowan in his resignation letter was his concern that the board would disregard the findings of a September report from the county’s consulting firm Rehmann regarding best practices and recommendations for the finance department.
Among other recommendations outlined in the Rehmann report, the consultant stated that county’s budgeting process had not yet fully transitioned from the county clerk to the administrator and finance departments and recommended implementing them “as soon as practical.”
“I have spent a little time paging through the report that Rehmann put together,” Amrhein said. “If I was in the role of taking the effort over from here, I think I would start with that as a basic proposal, and pull together all the key players … and say, ‘Let’s walk through this, piece by piece, and if there are places where you have concerns, if there are places where you think there’s things you can do better than what’s recommended in here, let’s talk about it. Let’s see if we can improve it.’” Amrhein also said that all the elected officials he interviewed while preparing the report agreed that financial reporting duties should not be divided between two people.
“Having a second person reporting sets up more of a potential for posturing between the top two administrative people of the county. It also creates more work for you as a board, for the board chairman in particular, having that supervision of both,” he said.
At their Feb. 8 special session, the county board decided to disregard the controller option in favor of pursuing a new CFO/ county administrator position.
