Shenanigans at the County Commission meetings | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: Post appears courtesy of From the County Compass by the Beaufort Observer.

    The trivial and oppositional intolerance of political and other board meetings drives some people up the wall. Others see it as one of the necessities of a democratic form of government. Others enjoy the banter, the art of debate and the talking tournament. Commissioner Stan Deatherage calls it: bloodless warfare. Some people watch the filmed Beaufort County Commissioners meetings out of curiosity. Others watch for simply entertainment. As dull as they are these meetings are, they are better than about half of what is on television.

    There are various levels of political courtesy. The citizens of every country in the world will tell you they expect their elected leaders to be civil, not to fight and not to engage is unkind behavior toward their fellow elected officials. Over the world there have been shouting matches, assaults, fist fights, and even gun fights at governing board meetings. Bad as you may think they are, Beaufort County Commissioners are on the more civilized end of this scale.

    The April commissioners meeting was among the more emotional meetings. Hood Richardson and Stan Deatherage along with Gary Brinn were drilling into the jail issue. The Gang of Four, consisting of Democrats Jerry Langley, Ed Booth, and Robert Belcher along the ultimate RINO (Republican In name Only) Al Klemm, were feeling the heat. The Gang of Four became defensive and then started handing out petty insults. Deatherage handed a few back and that was when Chairman Jerry Langley made a mistake. He ordered the filming to be stopped claiming Deatherage was out of control. Actually The Gang of Four was loosing.

    They had been maneuvered into having to admit that property taxes were going to pay for the twenty million dollar jail along with the increased operating cost of four million dollars per year. The whole thing is a fifteen percent increase in property taxes.

    Langley's mistake was to order the cameras to be stopped. These meetings are filmed so the public can see what their elected representatives are doing, warts and all. After the cameras stopped, Deatherage, Richardson and Brinn told Langley they were not saying one word until the cameras were started. Langley had to have the cameras started.

    Langleys' mistake was to take the meeting from public view and attempt to have a secret session right there in front of the public. Langley has a record of ordering meetings not to be filmed even though the commissioners have voted to have them filmed. He did this with t he jail committee and got his hand called. The meetings are now filmed although one has to be aware there is a lot of abbreviated and incomplete discussion because jail deals are made in the back room.

    The proper thing to have done should the discussion have become out of hand was for Langley to have announced a five minute recess. Then the public would have been assured nothing was being hidden.

    Langley is on both sides of this. Richardson accused the jail committee of making decisions that should be made by the entire board of commissioners. Langley said this was not true. He missed the point when he asserted that because the meeting are filmed every one knew what is going on and there was no need for the board to vote. He took this position in spite of the county attorney saying the jail committee is advisory to the board of county commissioners and everything they do should be approved by the entire board. Only three members of the committee are commissioners. They are Langley, Klemm and Belcher. Ed Henry is not elected to public office. He is a buddy of Al Klemm.

    Langley's thinking is inconsistent. It looks more like he does not fully understand how the board operates and is using the Chairmanship as a way to bully the board. As long as there are not four commissioners to challenge this kind of thinking the jail disaster will continue.