The Lake County Council and Board of Commissioners last week set up an emergency 10-day hiring freeze. Today, the council is expected to work on the details for making it permanent.

It is typical Lake County politics that the definition of "hiring freeze" is being debated. Is this a freeze like a permafrost, or is it more like soft-serve ice cream?

It is obvious to nearly everyone that Lake County government is overstaffed. The council needs to shed dozens, if not hundreds, of jobs this year. Yet the payroll has been expanding at a merry rate as if the inevitable can be postponed indefinitely.

Lake County officials have hired 71 new employees for full-time positions and dozens more for part-time summer help so far this year.

Wasn't there a hiring freeze already?

Councilman Tom O'Donnell, D-Dyer, said at last week's meeting that hiring freezes were passed in 2002, 2003 and 2004, saving $800,000 to $1.2 million annually, but were discontinued because too many exceptions were granted.

"There was not one job where we said, 'Don't fill it,'" O'Donnell said.

This year, despite the continual discussion of Lake County's need to squeeze $15 million from its budget, talk of a hiring freeze didn't surface in the Lake County Government Center until Lake County Surveyor George Van Til posted five job openings.

Lake County Council President Christine Cid, D-East Chicago, said to Van Til last week, "It has been in the papers for months and months that we have to cut $15 million. To say you were in the dark is not true."

Van Til says a hiring freeze doesn't take into account the need to fill jobs for which specialized knowledge is required, including two positions to comply with a federal Clean Water Act mandate.

As the council works on details of the hiring freeze today, it should put the onus on office holders to find an equivalent savings for each new job created. And it is up to the council to enforce this provision.

If a new hire is essential, find a job elsewhere in the department that can be cut. And if no job in the same department can be identified, find another office holder to sacrifice a job. The resulting cooperation between office holders will be worth it.

Councilman Ted Bilski, D-Hobart, noted at last week's meeting that too many officials tell the council to cut their budget for office supplies instead of staff. "Sometime in March or April, they come to us for more money," Bilski said. "The only true reductions are in personnel."

What Lake County needs is not just a hiring freeze but an ice age. The number of employees cannot be allowed to creep upward as it has in previous years.

Set up a hiring freeze that protects the taxpayers, not the employees.