We have been hearing Guilford County commissioners whining a lot lately about how they’re going to service the bond debt voters have created for themselves. The Rhino’s Scott Yost is tired of hearing it and rips commissioners a new one:
In an attempt to explain the county’s current financial state, the commissioners have been pointing plenty of fingers at plenty of scapegoats – the schools and their voracious appetite for county money, the county’s voters who once again approved hundreds of millions in new bond debt, the lackluster economy and inefficient county administration.
But there’s one place the commissioners haven’t looked to assess blame – the mirror. The commissioners are the ultimate authority in the county and, in the end, it’s the commissioners who determine a budget and pass it, who make additional expenditures during the year and who decide what bonds go on the ballot.
….The commissioners blame the citizens for passing the bonds but the board intentionally didn’t stress the full cost to voters when they were pushing the bonds to voters. For instance the commissioners who supported the jail never stressed to taxpayers how much it would cost to run a new jail – though that’s where the county will really take the financial hit year after year. In fact, the county still has no idea what it will cost to run the jail – because there has been no official estimate of what it will cost.
Note too that Yost highlights a recent instance when Commissioner Bruce Davis pulls an item from the consent agenda and saves the county “over $20,000 every year for years to come just by asking a simple question.” The consent agenda is where the real spending takes place, most of the time with a single vote. It would be interesting to see a public official on any of our local government entities pull every item from the consent agenda for separate vote. The guys and gals at the press table wouldn’t like it, though.
