Frustration over sign code enforcement and ongoing tension between the Pierce County Council and the executive branch spilled over at a council meeting this morning.

The result: a blistering condemnation of the county’s public works director.

In a report to the council’s economic and infrastructure development committee, public works director Brian Ziegler said his department has scaled back collecting signs illegally placed in public rights of way as it cuts costs to balance its budget.

That prompted council Chairman Roger Bush, R-Graham,

to label Ziegler’s explanation “a bunch of hogwash” designed to cover up what Bush called Ziegler’s mismanagement of the department.

“You have made mistake after mistake after mistake,” Bush lectured Ziegler.

In recent years the council has been keenly interested in sign code enforcement. Though it didn’t provide new funding, it set aside $40,000 in the 2007 public works budget for a pilot enforcement project in East Pierce County.

The crackdown proved to be popular with county residents, so the council set aside $168,000 for enforcement in 2008 and $100,000 this year. (For more details on the crackdown, read this story published in Sunday’s newspaper).

The department collected more than 16,000 illegal signs during the crackdown. But public works suspended countywide sign sweeps last fall amid questions over how to enforce the law.

Now the department says sign code enforcement isn’t a top priority as it trims the county’s $70 million road fund by $8 million in response to declining tax and fee revenues and the lost proceeds from failed property sales.

This morning Ziegler told the committee the department has been forced to cut spending on road maintenance, commercial vehicle inspection, road sweeping and other programs.

He said the department will continue to collect illegal signs – mostly when bad weather prohibits road maintenance work. And it will remove signs that pose a hazard to drivers and pedestrians. But it won’t conduct the countywide sweeps.

That plan didn’t square with council members.

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Bush said the illegal signs are a safety issue, not primarily an aesthetic issue, as Ziegler has suggested.

Bush expressed disbelief that Ziegler couldn’t find $100,000 in a $70 million budget to enforce the sign code. He suggested that with scores – perhaps hundreds – of public works employees in the field, each could collect a few signs a week.

“You have the money to do it. You have the crews to do it. You have the time to do it,” Bush said.

The councilman went further, blaming the department’s shortfall on mismanagement of resources, including several failed property sales. Among them: the recent failed bid to sell the county’s Elk Plain road shop.

Councilman Shawn Bunney, R-Lake Tapps, chair of the committee, took a kinder tack. He asked Ziegler to revisit his priorities in light of the council’s desire to maintain sign code enforcement.

After the meeting, Ziegler declined to respond to Bush’s comments except to say the department would continue to collect illegal signs that pose a safety hazard.

“Safety has always been our first priority,” Ziegler said. “The allegation that we’re not removing signs that are a safety hazard is unfounded.”

Today’s meeting is just the latest example of tension between the council – which approves the county budget and sets broad policies – and the executive branch, which carries out policy and runs the day-to-day operations of county government.

Those tensions have been present for years and have resulted in dust-ups over funding for Chambers Bay Golf Course and – more recently – disagreements over staffing in the county executive’s office.

Council members contend prioritizing spending is a policy – and therefore a council – function. County executives and department heads have held that they have the power to administer the budget within spending limits set by the council.

Council members indicated Tuesday they will revise budget language to compel public works to step up sign code enforcement.