If you were in the service and something unusual happened on your watch, you would be required to accept at least some of the responsibility for whatever occurred. I think if you are an elected public servant and unusual things happen while you are holding office, the unusual happenings should be credited to you.
We get a little news about Ravalli County happenings in our local paper. A while back an assistant county attorney was dismissed from his job. The cost to the County was estimated to be more than $250,000 over a few years. There was never a satisfactory explanation of how we continue to maintain an attorney on the county payroll when he doesn’t do any work for the county. This little fiasco has to fall squarely in the laps of the elected county commissioners and the county attorney. So they made a mistake. It’s only taxpayer money, so what if we are in a down economy.
We recently received a little news in the local paper that the county settled a lawsuit by a developer for $300,000 with payment spread over a few years. There was no mention of who was paying the $300,000. It might have been the county’s insurance carrier, but that was not mentioned in the article. Was it the insurance carrier’s obligation? If it was, hooray! I wonder if the county’s insurance premium is going to increase.
The county government is getting more like the federal government. The federal Congress throws millions around as small parts of billions and is beginning to throw billions around as small parts of trillions. Our local government is throwing hundreds of thousands around like small parts of millions. It’s only taxpayer money.
I wonder how much $550,000 put back in the county budget could be used to finance some of the budget cuts the commissioners have made that used to help some of the taxpayers in the county?
Now sequestration is beginning to cut into the money the county expected to receive from the federal government and the county is beginning to squeal a little. Could it be that we need a little better management of the contributions taxpayers make to run our local government? We ought to think about that the next time we go to the polls.
John Robinson
Corvallis