Commissioners get paid to do nothing
You have to scratch your head and wonder what county commissioners were thinking during their specially called meeting Monday night.
The meeting was called for one purpose and one purpose only – to decide whether Warren County would hold a sales tax referendum. The referendum would give voters the chance to determine whether to raise the local option sales tax by 3/4 of a cent.
Heading into Monday night’s meeting, there appeared to be two possible outcomes. County commissioners would either vote to hold the sales tax referendum or they would vote to not hold one.
In the end, they decided to do neither.
Saying they didn’t have enough time to make a decision, county commissioners voted, 12-10, to postpone any action until their next regular meeting in a month.
When you talk about the wheels of government moving slowly, this meeting is the perfect example why. And when you talk about government waste, Monday’s meeting certainly takes a place on the list.
It doesn’t rank up there with paying an architect $50,000 to design jail plans – and then firing that architect – but it should be cause for concern. That’s because commissioners were paid $550 for a meeting to decide one simple issue, the sales tax referendum. They left the meeting without even voting on it.
Essentially, that means Warren County taxpayers paid commissioners $550 just for the heck of it. There was no decision, no action, no nothing. What a waste of time and money.
Even more puzzling is the fact commissioners held a mock vote two weeks earlier just to see where everyone stood on the sales tax referendum. During that mock vote, commissioners showed overwhelming support for the referendum, 19-4.
It’s also curious how commissioners had a full two weeks to prepare for this special meeting before pleading ignorant Monday. This was a meeting they knew was coming. It wasn’t a pop quiz thrown at them with no warning.
But instead of doing their homework, performing some simple research and representing this county the way they are supposed to, our elected officials apparently piddled around for two weeks.
If commissioners wanted to hold a county-wide referendum, that would have been fine. If they voted not to do so, that would have been OK too.
But twiddling their thumbs at the expense of taxpayers is not acceptable.