[ad_1]
Think of this as The Hamilton County Clown Show, Saga 14: Sequel and Prequel.
It’s not enough that our commissioner and mayor are still bickering over real and imaginary trifles. alone is not enough. Indeed, even after the Commission voted on January 5 to authorize additional attorneys’ fees “appropriately” for the Commission itself and Reubin Taylor County Attorney (rather than Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp). , it is not enough that the attorney fee meter is still running. “The county itself is suing.”
No. None are good enough. There are more.
Sequel: Join us today as the Commission discusses the Jan. 6 letter from the Tennessee State Board of Audit asking the Hamilton County Commissioner to reconsider the matter. Specifically, the Secretary is concerned that a budget amendment resolution without a monetary amount has been passed. The board approved future attorney fees related to the dispute between Weston, Mayor of Wamp, and County Attorney Rubin Taylor, but did not define a specific amount.
The Office of the Secretary acknowledged the “future” aspect of these charges, but noted that the budget revision did not even include the estimated amounts required by law.
Re-roofing a house that doesn’t have a number in the dollar range on the contract? Of course not.
Prequel: That’s it. The Commissioner was explicitly warned of this not once but at least twice during the meeting when discussing these amendments and spending.
Hamilton County Treasurer Lee Brauner told them that, in his understanding, they would not comply, based on concerns already raised by the General Accounting Office from previous commission resolutions and circumstances. .
At the same meeting, Commissioner Chip Baker defrauded the commission’s outside attorney, John Kombalinca, of a rough estimate of up to $200,000 more in future costs, despite the fact that the commissioner made it from the bench. No numbers were added to the resolutions passed.
On Monday, Baker said he expects the committee to reconsider the resolution this week or next.
“It makes sense to me to ask for a certain amount,” he told TFP. “I’m fine with it. We just need to discuss it and reconsider.”
Sorry for the editorial (no, please don’t), but if it makes sense in hindsight to include an estimate of these future litigation costs, everyone is wielding their swords to let budget revisions pass. Why didn’t it make sense when
And why, in the last few years, it didn’t make sense for County Attorney Taylor to seek the Commissioner’s OK for unlimited outside attorney services quotes that were solicited, billed, and approved without the Commissioner’s input? ?
Don’t think I’m picking only Baker here. There have been several committee chairs over the past few years (not to mention this is a committee-wide effort). But think about it. Taylor’s office has outperformed his budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past three years, even though his annual budget increased from $889,500 in fiscal 2017 to more than $1.5 million in fiscal 2022. increase. Part of this budget overrun was approximately $1.8 million in outside legal fees to the county’s finance department. These costs were approved by Taylor alone, without sign-off from the commissioner or then-mayor Jim Coppinger.
Taylor’s defense? For 29 years, no one has questioned it.
We’ve posed this question before, the county attorney whose job it is to direct the commissioner to approve the procurement of items and professional services worth $25,000 or more, which he himself spent and oversaw. Ask yourself why you didn’t do this for something.
And let’s ask one more question. Why would the county commission falsely try to save face for its carelessness by defending the old guard county attorney and blaming the new mayor?
If this was really a TV series, Today’s Clown Show would star a decidedly forgetful commissioner lecturing the Wamp mayor with his lawyers about the need to drop the lawsuit if “the county itself filed a lawsuit.” , starting with this January 5 summary.
In reality, our commissioners would rather we forget than realize their dereliction of responsibility.
They overruled the fact that Taylor had sued Wamp, and when Wamp responded, his counterclaim, as legally required, was against Taylor’s dismissal by the mayor and their own re-employment of Taylor. questioned the authority of the committee to
The Commission ignored the fact that Prime Minister Jeffrey Atherton ordered the Commission to be added as a defendant in Wamp’s counterclaim, just last week’s financial statement over the sloppiness of their resolution that could cause it to fail to comply with state law. It’s the same as ignoring the director’s warning.
I might also add a solution Taylor, an attorney, should have known to warn them.
James Faulkner warned, “The past is never dead. Not even the past.”
So it’s a prequel, but not a sequel. We expect progress and a happy ending. Or at least for us taxpayers.
Staff file photo by Robin Rudd/Commissioner Warren McKee (middle back) tells Attorney Barrett Albritton, the attorney representing Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp, the mayor’s response to the resolution regarding the status of County Attorney Rubin Taylor. I have a question about compliance.[ad_2]
Source link
