Commissioners paid $42,900 for travel expenses
This letter to the Mountain Xpress by Peggy T. Bennett shines a spotlight on the travel expenses incurred by the Buncombe County Commissioners. According to Bennett, commissioners are not paid for the actual miles traveled, but with a flat per-week allowance.
"Their [county commissioners’] travel allowance was just reduced from $650 every two weeks to $320 every two weeks, which is still unacceptable. …
In the last two years, the commissioners have received a total of $214,500, or $42,900 each in travel and technology allowances! For the next two years, even with the recent reduction in allowances, they will still receive $89,700, or $17,940 each. These are perks, not salaries, and this is still unacceptable."
Reimbursing county commissioners for expenses is appropriate, but they should be reimbursed for actual expenses, not receive flat allowances. It is not rocket science for commissioners to turn in exact mileage and receipts so that taxpayers can audit the expenses of county commissioners. For that matter, the county manager and other county employees should be governed by the same expense reimbursement rules. That’s what the employees at the John Locke Foundation and many other organizations are required to do.
One question left unanswered: How long have commissioners collected $42,900 for two years of travel and other expenses? Sounds like a very convenient way to pad their salaries.
How about this radical idea? Once the system is changed to reimbursement for actual expenses, put commissioner expense reports online for all taxpayers to review. See the John Locke Foundation’s transparency website, which provides transparency scores for all one hundred counties and549 cities.
Only two counties received A’s: Mecklenburg and Wake. Twenty-five counties earned D’s on this evaluation. Only one city, Columbus, earned an A. Two cities earned F’s, Longview and Walnut Creek. The vast majority of cities received D’s for their lack of transparency.
