Beaufort County Commissioners Fail to Supervise - Part I | Eastern North Carolina Now

    All the Bad Government is not in Raleigh and Washington, DC

    This is the first of a two part article. This week we examine some of the, to say it politely, short comings of the Board of County Commissioners and to say it more plainly, disasters the Board has placed on the backs of county residents. Because I am a conservative, I naturally come at this with the view that Government rarely does anything well. However, many of the decisions made by local government go beyond just not doing the task well. Some are complete failures worthy of a "Golden Fleece".

    At the root of these failures is the inability of the Commissioners to provide oversight, to supervise, to control the outcome, to set behavioral standards, and to make adjustments when it becomes apparent desired results are not being obtained. They fail to apply the magic of "management". Another characteristic these failures have is passage by "the Gang of five" in cram down votes.

    Failure to have and enforce a policy of who can enter into a contract on behalf of Beaufort County and the taxpayers is a good example. The Director of Health continues to enter into contracts without the approval of the Commissioners. The health director in the past has negotiated the County's annual health contract with the State of North Carolina and signed it with only the County Chairman's signature. The Board of Commissioners never approved the contract but the county taxpayer provided the money. At present there appears to be several contracts that have not been approved by either the Board of Health or the Commissioners. Both are required to make these contracts legal. At this writing I doubt even one Commissioner could explain what these contracts are about or how much money the County has committed to spend. That is definitely a lack of over sight.

    There was the situation with the Sheriff. That department seemed to be surprised to learn that they could not sue a former deputy just because they did not like him. Actually they were surprised to learn that they could not start a civil suit without the permission of the Board of County Commissioners. Guess what, the tax payers paid about $10,000 to try to recover a disputed $300. And the Sheriff lost the case. The Commissioners paid this Bill for the Sheriff. That is definitely bad management.

    Beaufort County has just enough fund balance to squeak by. Five or six years ago we had about 8 million more than the minimum requirement. The Gang of Five did have a policy on this one. The policy was to continue to spend and simply take the money out of our savings (the fund balance) instead of raising taxes. This is an old trick used by boards of county commissioners. The public never knows about the bad management until it is too late. Why do you think they raised taxes 6 percent or three million dollars this year. The Gang of Five was in trouble. But, they had an option, either cut some of the fat out of the budget or raise taxes. They made another bad judgement and government got bigger.

    Then there is the 8 million of overspending in the 33 million dollar school budget. The overspending resulted in overbuilding the schools by as much as 4000 seats in a system that has 7,000 students. That is as much as 58 percent over build. To add insult to injury the School Board and the County Commissioners built the over capacity in the wrong places. You can argue the school system did it but the Gang of Five held the purse and spent the money. You pay for maintaining, heating and cooling those extra seats.

    Then there is the School law suit that we won and did not have to pay the schools anything because of the million dollars hid in the lunch room fund.. Guess what, the Gang of Five gave them the more than 700,000 dollars the court awarded before the we knew about the million dollars hid in the lunch room fund. Now, it really gets bad. The Gang of Five entered into a long term agreement to increase funding by a minimum of about 2,500,00 per year over a several year period of time. That amounts to about ten million over a four year period. Another cram down vote by the Gang of Five. To be fair, they got something for your money. The SBI investigation about other issues stopped and several commissioners breathed a big sigh of relief.

    There is the Beaufort County Hospital situation. It was worth more than 50 million dollars. It never paid a dividend to the tax payers. The board was appointed by the County Commissioners with a County Commissioner serving on the Hospital Board. Bankrupt because of lack of oversight by the Gang of Five. Complaints about poor management by the Board fell on deaf Commissioners ears. The slept through the entire bankruptcy.

    Economic development is another example. During the past several years the tax payers have spent millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. I could go on and on. These are just some of the high lights. This Board of Commissioners dominated by the Gang of Five have done a sorry job of managing your money and improving conditions for the citizens of this county. They love to say we are an impoverished county. Could that be true because of the commissioners?

    Part Two will examine how these financial disasters happened to your money.happened to your money.