New risk director finds insurance, property value problems in Lancaster County

Lancaster County's new risk management director brought a number of concerns to the County Board Thursday, including 21 uninsured vehicles and federal criticism of the values assigned to county-owned property.

"Once I stepped into the role here, I realized that some of the direction of the department has been kind of non-existent for a while," said Bob Robles, who was hired by the board to be risk management director this spring.

In addition to concerns, Robles brought to the board a number of proposals to address county problems, including setting up an anonymous tip portal on the internet so county employees can report things that bother them without fear of retribution.

Robles said the state of Nebraska, Douglas County and the city of Lincoln already have such tip systems in place.

Robles also proposed moving the risk management office, which is located across the street from the County-City Building, to a more central location.

"If space becomes available, we'd like to move somewhere where we're a little more centrally located to departments, so they can come visit, make it more accessible to folks," Robles said.

The risk management office did not immediately respond to a call Friday about which county departments had vehicles that failed to be added to the county's insurance plan. Robles did not say Thursday how long the vehicles were uninsured.

Regarding the value of county property, Robles said values have not been updated in 20 years.

Robles said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was recently reviewing flood insurance and questioned the values for county properties covered by county flood insurance.

"The properties are extremely undervalued, roughly $2 million under what FEMA says it should be," Robles said. "So we're going to work ... with FEMA to get a negotiated number, so this way we can still manage those costs but still retain our coverage."

The county's risk management department used to be its smallest department, with one full-time and one part-time employee, but now it has three full-time employees.

Sue Eckley, who became risk management director in 2006, retired this year.

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