EBENSBURG, Pa. -- In January 2004, Cambria County welcomed three new commissioners into office for the first time in 80 years.

With no one there to say, "We've always done it that way," the three new guys -- Democrats P.J. Stevens and Milan Gjurich and Republican William Harris -- decided they needed a top-to-bottom reassessment of county operations. The county's $7.5 million debt and its junk bond status provided all the incentive they needed.

Chairman Stevens, the former county controller, knew one place he wanted to look at immediately: the $42 million county human services budget, which represented 30 percent of the total county budget. The fact that 96 percent of that amount was "pass-through" money -- money from federal and state sources, rather than local tax dollars -- did not matter.

"We're still obligated to make sure it is spent efficiently," Stevens said. "When people hear 'federal dollars', or 'state dollars,' they think it's Santa Claus. It's not. Those are your tax dollars."

A year later, the commissioners believe they have a more streamlined and responsive human services department, one that is improving even in departments where they've had to cut.

What lessons does Cambria's experience hold for others?

The affable Stevens just smiled.

"Sometimes a clean sweep with a new broom is a good thing. We looked at things from a fresh perspective, from a more skeptical perspective. Our big thing was, how do we achieve the important outcomes we want in the most efficient manner?"

The new commissioners had little to lose. Once they approved a 10-mill tax increase to right the county's financial ship, they knew they weren't going to win any popularity contests.

Their first step was to authorize $18,500 for Human Services Planning Systems, a consulting firm from Lancaster County, to examine every aspect of the county's human services operation, from staffing to record keeping. Their job was to determine what worked and what didn't.

"We had four key words: responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness and accountability," said Gjurich, a former superintendent for the Conemaugh Valley School District.

The biggest problem, according to a 126-page report released in June, was a 30 percent staff turnover rate among Children and Youth staff, which the consultants attributed to the low pay and high stress of the job. They also found that case managers in Cambria's Area Agency on Aging handled 175 clients, too many to provide adequate service.

Perhaps most distressing, though, was this: Case managers and direct service staff in all areas spent more than half their time filling out paperwork, most of it required by the state and "much of which is duplicative and unnecessary," the consultants said.

In short, the human services department in Cambria County -- and probably many other Pennsylvania counties -- has spent more time servicing paper than people.

Stevens, for one, saw a connection between the paperwork and the high staff turnover.

"When these young people come out of school, they want make an impact on humanity, but instead they are stuck in an office doing paperwork," he said. "It becomes very frustrating."

To address the shortcomings, the commissioners set goals to increase caseworkers' pay and lighten their caseloads. To reduce paperwork, they've launched a pilot program to equip caseworkers with laptop computers, saving time spent pulling paper files or filling out forms. Gjurich said they expect the laptops will mean caseworkers may need only one day in the office instead of two each week, so they can spend more time in the field working with families.

One critical element of the new approach is a quarterly survey of clients that looks for ways to improve service and save money. With yearly federal allocations flat and costs rising, they determined from their surveys that, for instance, they could reduce the weekly housecleaning visits for some of their elderly clients to every other week.

Another key component is a program set up by J. Dean Burkholder of Human Services Planning to measure outcomes: How many people seen in a drug and alcohol treatment program abstained for at least 90 days? How many families seen by Children and Youth workers had no abuse reports in the subsequent six months?

Those may sound like common sense questions, Burkholder said, but "I think there are very few counties that can show outcome results." That's a situation he expects may change after President Bush in his State of the Union address said that he planned to cut or eliminate 150 government programs "that are not getting results, or duplicate current efforts, or do not fulfill essential priorities."

If programs want to survive, Burkholder believes, they will need proof they're getting results.

At every step of the makeover, the commissioners said they made sure staff members were involved.

"People felt as if they could share what was on their minds, and they could do it without fear of repercussions," confirmed Cindy McLaughlin. McLaughlin was the county's human services director but agreed to move over to mental health/mental retardation last fall following a colleague's retirement. That has saved the county one administrator's salary.

McLaughlin, who has served on a statewide committee of human services directors, credits the improvements to the commissioners' decision to hire an outside company to come in. "It gave us an independent look at how things were being done, taking out personal biases and historical factors."

And, she noted, the commissioners made it known that they wanted people's honest opinions about how the county could do better. "People feel like they have a voice," she said -- and they've already noticed a decline in staff turnover.

It's still early, Stevens said, but they believe they're on the right track as they ready their second consecutive balanced budget. As one sign their fiscal house is in better order, the county's bond rating has been upgraded to stable and the human services budget, after years of annual increases, has been held in check.

"The big thing now is that we continue to sharpen our services and to study outcomes," Stevens said, "so we can serve more people."