IT’S OUR MONEY THE COUNTY USES
When the Hamilton County Commission starts talking about money involving how their operations are run, never forget that is our money they are talking about.
It’s taxpayer money, so cellphone bills, office space and money carried over from year to year are not negligible issues.
Commissioners discussed several such issues at their Wednesday meeting but will not vote on resolutions until next week.
One resolution involves removing language in the commission’s travel policy that allows members to only rent office space in public buildings. Since the policy already allows the rental of space for offices generally, we don’t object to the space being in nonpublic buildings.
We do understand Commissioner Greg Martin’s point about preferring to meet constituents at a restaurant, at their homes or at a location about which there is a concern — in other words, not needing a commission office, per se — but we also see Commissioner Warren Mackey’s point about wanting that location to be a “secure” and “recognizable” place.
Some commissioners also meet constituents at their own places of business, but other commissioners may not be able to do that or may not have such places.
Martin questioned another part of the travel policy allowing reimbursements to be rolled over into discretionary spending. And while finance administrator Al Kiser was present Wednesday, Martin asked if that policy was allowed in various other county offices.
“Very seldom” was Kiser’s reply. The money, Martin was told, usually goes back into the county general fund.
“That makes more sense to me,” Martin said. “We should be like them.”
That would be our preference, too. If commissioners do not spend all of their travel money in a given year, perhaps a decrease in the allotment is in order. If it’s annually not enough, they should ask the mayor to increase the amount he puts in the budget.
On another travel matter, we agree with the resolution that requests travel money for commissioners to attend meetings of boards at which they represent the commission be drawn from the commission’s budget rather than the individual commissioner’s budget. However, if that board is more self-serving to the individual commissioner and of little value to the commission as a whole, the money still should come out of the individual commissioner’s travel money.
Determining the value of service on certain boards might make for interesting public discussion among commissioners.
Another financial issue commissioners discussed was payment for their cellphones coming out of the commission’s budget rather than out of the travel accounts of individual members.
In a committee meeting before Wednesday’s commission meeting, Kiser had said some commissioners already were using county phones and the county phone plan.
If some commissioners’ phones are paid by the commission and some from their travel accounts, it is a matter of fairness. The money should come from one source or another and not cost certain commissioners money from their travel accounts that is not coming out of the accounts of others.
In general in recent years, with perhaps the exception of the discretionary money veto grab several years ago, we believe most commissioners have tried to take care with county money, to be fair with it and to understand from whom it comes.
We trust that will continue in future deliberations.