WALKER’S ROCKY SHIP OF STATE

Walker County Commissioner Shannon Whitfield knew what he was getting into, and he still wanted the job.

His North Georgia county, he told voters last year in his race for sole commissioner, was hemorrhaging money. It was bad, really bad.

With the recent receipt of his first county audit, Whitfield now knows how bad.

Walker County’s debt, according to the balance sheet, is $69.9 million. However, the county took in only $27 million in revenue last year.

That deficit, Whitfield said, is likely to force him to raise property taxes, though he doesn’t yet know how much. His predecessor, Bebe Heiskell, raised the county’s millage rate 13 percent in 2015 and 64 percent in 2014, and said in 2015 she should have raised the rate during the 2010 to 2013 period, when taxes were virtually flat.

“We may be pushed against the wall and have no other option,” he told Times Free Press reporter Tyler Jett.

We believe a board of commissioners would not have allowed the county finances to get so out of hand and have advocated in the past for the adoption of one. The new sole commissioner agrees, and 75 percent of Walker County voters agreed in a nonbinding referendum in May 2016.

In 2018, Walker County voters will get a chance to make a change in their form of government a reality in a referendum that would put the county under a chairperson and four district commissioners who would be elected in 2020. The Georgia state legislature passed such a measure this spring, and Gov. Nathan Deal signed it.

In the meantime, to use his illustration, it’s Whitfield’s “Titanic” to turn around.

Walker’s sole commissioner told voters last year he believed the county’s debt was $84.3 million, while Heiskell claimed it was around $12.1 million. Various bond payments the county owes, and a disputed $8.7 million debt the county owes Erlanger Health System account for much of the difference between the two then-candidates’ financial prognostications.

The audit, of course, showed numbers closer to Whitfield’s estimate, and — depending on how money diverted in 2016 for roads is accounted for — he still believes the county’s debt is closer to the full amount he named last year.

“Financially,” he told Jett, “we are upside-down.”

In addition to figuring out how much property taxes will be raised, Whitfield will need to deal with a pension plan underfunded by about $3.8 million and the Erlanger debt, which a United States Court of Appeals recently said is actually owed. Heiskell, who signed a contract to back a loan to then-Hutcheson Medical Center, and the county’s attorney had argued otherwise in court filings.

If he is able to right the county before the 2020 election, forget sole commissioner. The county may want him to be commissioner for life.