The Nevada County Quorum Court approved their annual budget a couple of weeks ago. There was a great deal of controversy over the vote with some JPs disagreeing over the correct way to handle the ordinance that would set spending limits and estimate expenditures and revenues for the coming year.
Sounds simple enough, right? The problem was that the bonuses for county employees was reportedly caught up in that same ordinance as was the hiring of an appraisal firm. The JPs who didn’t want to rehire this particular appraisal firm apparently felt they needed to vote against the ordinance in order to force a re-evaluation of that particular point.
I think there are some facts to be considered.
1. There’s a budget committee in place. That committee meets several times over the course of several months and puts together the budget for the coming year. Those folks who give of their time are to be commended for doing so. It’s a thankless job.
2. However, the members of the quorum court as a whole have the right - and the duty as an elected representative of their community - to tear that budget to shreds. They should question anything and everything that makes a difference to their constituency and let’s face it, how the county spends tax payer dollars should be of interest to every person who pays taxes.
3. The entire process should be done in the open. Despite my personal requests to be alerted regarding meetings of any committee, the budget committee continues to meet without notifying me. This is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act but that doesn’t seem to carry any weight with the quorum court or the committee. In fact, the FOI states that any meeting of two or more members of an elected body (that would be the quorum court) is subject to the FOI.
4. The question of the appraisal firm hired to conduct reappraisals of the county has become a heated topic. The bottom line, in my opinion, is not whether the county should have chosen a new appraisal company, but whether they should have taken some different steps to make the selection.
Some facts to keep in mind about the appraisal issue:
- There were two companies that bid on the job.
- The bids were more than a half million dollars each.
- Five dollars separated the two bids.
That, in my book, falls in that category, “things that make you go hmmm.”
One county official said that to change companies would cost the county a lot of money. During the December meeting, the county judge said that he’d decided he was going to choose the company that presented the lower bid, regardless of which that was. Does anyone else see a problem? After all, if it really would cost a lot of money to change companies, shouldn’t that cost be figured into the equation when choosing the company?
I’m the first to admit that government accounting, business and bookkeeping are incredibly complex tasks. It’s never as simple as it seems to the outsider looking in. But maybe if there were more people demanding accountability, the insiders would become more openly accountable.
At least that’s the way it looks from my world.
(Wendy Ledbetter is the
editor for the NC Picayune and can be reached at wendylledbetter
@yahoo.com)
Prescott, Ark. —
