COGs Gone Wild?
Sam Hieb, my colleague over at the Carolina Journal, writes this
article about the role of North Carolina’s councils of government (COGs).
North Carolina’s 17 regional government councils are supposed to assist local
county and city governments’ planning efforts. Operations money comes from
several sources, including dues paid by the participating cities and counties.
Recent problems have caused some county officials to question the value they
are getting for their money. According to Hieb’s article, the suggested merger
of the Piedmont Triad COG and the Northwest Triad COG has some Guilford
commissioners fuming.
"How can you merge and tell me
you need more money to operate? In the business world, when you merge, it takes
less money to operate," said Commissioner Billy Yow. "To me, this is
another nonprofits, if you will, pulling money from the backs of the taxpayers.
And it is a burden on taxpayers in all the counties."
And Guilford County commission
chairman Skip Alston has a proposal to withdraw from the Piedmont Triad COG.
"It’s a serious option,"
Alston said. "I wouldn’t ask for it if I didn’t have support."
The situation Down East is even more
troublesome. The Eastern Carolina COG made a series of bad loans from its
revolving loan program designed to help businesses that could not get bank
loans. This COG had to write off more than $650,000, leaving the member
counties and cities holding the bag. There were probably very good reasons that
the banks turned down these risky ventures. Now some county commissioners are
seriously considering dumping the ECCOG.
"I question the necessity of
their existence," Pamlico County Commissioner Christine Mele told the
Carolina Journal. "We could take [membership dues] and give [them] back to
our own people."
As these examples indicate, accountability to the taxpayers
is a big problem with COGs. They are funded by federal, state, and local tax
money, but taxpayers, if they even know COGs exist, are unable to influence
their work or hold them accountable. Their only recourse is to appeal to the
locally elected officials to supervise the spending of public money. As the
record shows, that is exceedingly difficult.
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