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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 2, 2001
This is the first of four profiles of the finalists for the job of Pinellas County administrator.
Two months ago, Barry Burton was one of three finalists to run Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
Five months before that, he was second choice to manage the city of Augusta, Ga.
Now he's one of four finalists to run Pinellas County's government.
A man desperate to find a new post?
Nope, say his current bosses. They sing Burton's praises in Franklin County, Ohio, where he's the second-in-command. Administrator Guy Worley describes Burton as "outstanding" and "stellar."
So why is Burton looking so hard to leave?
He wants to run his own show.
"What I'm looking for is the right opportunity," he said in a telephone interview last week. "You have a strong community,and a nice place to live and raise a family."
Running the show isn't likely to happen any time soon in Franklin County, where Columbus is located. Worley has been at the top for four years and says he's not going anywhere soon.
"I'm confident that if I ever did leave, commissioners would appoint Barry to the top position," Worley said. "He's very talented. He could do the job. I rely on him very heavily."
Despite the high marks, Burton has little job security. Both he and Worley work without contracts. Last year's election of Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy to the three-member Franklin County Commission has some speculating that, if a Democrat replaces Dewey Stokes, the Republican commission president, the county's top managers could be swept from office.
But Kilroy said she doesn't intend to clean house and said the speculation "is a good line for the Republican Party to take . . . making sure the Democrats are seen as horrible, fearsome people."
She gave Burton high marks,as well.
"It's a real challenge to keep top people in place," she said. "I'm not sure how glowing I should be."
She and others described Burton as intense but even-tempered, a man with a strong work ethic and a devotion to his wife and three children.
"He can see potential problems and then the solution to those problems that sometimes are not so obvious," Stokes said. "Barry's rather perceptive. He's thinking ahead."
At 37, Burton is the youngest finalist for the Pinellas job. He's also the only one who hasn't worked in Florida government. He doesn't see either factor as a drawback.
"It's a job I can do and have the experience for," he said.
Franklin County has a $1.1-billion budget and population of 1 million -- close parallels to Pinellas.
Burton's salary there is $119,500. The new Pinellas administrator can expect to be paid $117,500 to $182,200, a range set by county commissioners.
Burton took the Franklin County job after spending two years as administrator in Allegany County, Md., a mountainous county of 75,000 people. Before that, he worked as a department head in Hamilton County, Ohio, home to Cincinnati.
In all three places, one of Burton's chief tasks has been to restructure how the county sets the budget. In Franklin County, Burton heads the county's "Managing for Results" initiative. The program, designed to make the county function more like a business, designs a "performance-based budget" by studying how each department works and what its goals should be, not just matching line items from one year to the next.
"It allows you to work toward strategic goals, not just the daily crisis," Burton said.
Worley said the change has meant more scrutiny of all county spending, rather than just spending increases.
Burton also has worked as a trouble-shooter. Last year, he oversaw restructuring of the county's criminal justice grant administration. Earlier this year, he ran the county's child support agency after top staffers there quit abruptly.
"It was a major challenge, but we never heard any complaints from him," she said.
- Times researchers Cathy Wos and Caryn Baird contributed to this report.