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Genetin to direct Job and Family Services
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Judee Genetin
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Dave Ludt
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners unanimously appointed Judee L. Genetin as director of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services.
A spokesman for a political-action group, however, again voiced his objection to the appointment process and renewed a call for blacks to be better represented as managers in county departments.
Genetin’s annual salary will remain at $100,896, the level at which it was set when she became acting JFS director in October 2007. She did not attend Thursday’s meeting.
Genetin supervises about 300 employees, including both income-maintenance and child-support enforcement workers.
“She’s the best qualified,” of the applicants for the permanent JFS directorship, Commissioner David N. Ludt said after he voted for Genetin’s appointment.
As to why the commissioners left her in the acting director position for so long, Ludt said: “We wanted to make sure she could do the job.”
Ludt said Genetin brought Mahoning JFS from the bottom of state JFS ratings, increasing its overall performance by about 25 percent. The state ranks county JFS departments based on many criteria, including timeliness of application processing, he said.
The Rev. Kenneth Simon, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church and chairman of the Community Mobilization Committee, repeated his objection to the process under which the job was posted, applicants were interviewed, and the commissioners waited nearly 3 years before making Genetin permanent director.
Although he praised Genetin’s leadership, especially as it pertains to budgetary matters, he complained that African-Americans are underrepresented in leadership roles in county government.
The CMC is a voter registration, education and mobilization organization.
Genetin has a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Akron and a law degree from Case Western Reserve University.
She joined the county JFS as its deputy director for child support enforcement in January 2006.
Before that, she was deputy director of legal services at the Stark County Department of JFS, where she worked for 20 years.
The major challenge for JFS here is to serve a recession-induced increase in the number of clients with fewer staff and a reduced budget, with the budget likely to suffer further cuts, Genetin said previously.
Besides the minister, a local labor leader weighed in on a JFS management issue.
Sam Prosser, president of Teamsters Local 377, which represents five supervisors and two lawyers at the county’s child support enforcement agency, told the commissioners his union represents relatively few JFS workers, but must be reckoned with.
Three CSEA supervisors, who belonged to Local 377, were laid off early in 2009, two of them being almost immediately rehired into vacant, entry-level, $10-to-$11-per-hour social service and income maintenance positions that gave them about half their previous supervisory pay. The third laid-off CSEA supervisor didn’t apply for any available positions.
“Although our membership is small, that doesn’t mean we won’t be heard. ...We demand equal access and respect as our other union brothers and sisters with the larger [bargaining] units there,” Prosser said.
Citing what he said was a successful 1997 Teamsters’ strike against United Parcel Service, Prosser warned the commissioners: “Ignore the Teamsters at your own peril.”