Pair owed thanks for fiscal management
The printed minutes of the June 5, 2012, meeting of the Bonner County Board of Commissioners shows that Commissioner Rich stated “He had made a few phone calls to people in the construction field and was told it might have been more cost efficient to demolish the courthouse and start from scratch , but since we have come this far it would be wise to finish what was started.”
That statement is truly puzzling as Commissioner Rich, along with commissioners Todd Crossett and Joe Young, were responsible for starting the remodeling project when they voted during their Dec. 9 meeting to accept LCA’s “ … structural evaluation and master plan for the Bonner County courthouse” and when, during the April 21, 2009, meeting he voted along with commissioners Cornel Rasor and Young to pay LCA “…for services to the courthouse master plan.”
The meeting minutes do not explain Commissioner Rich’s about-face in 2012. Nor do they indicate if the contractor he contacted in 2012 was the one who had not been awarded the remodeling contract after commissioners Rasor, Rich and Young had voted unanimously for Ginno Construction on May 18, 2010.
A reading of the printed minutes from January 2007 through December 2012, reveal a steady trail of commissioners’ decisions surrounding their expenditures of Bonner County money which peak with the remodeling of the courthouse.
Commissioner Rich was right in the middle of the unanimous decisions to construct a new Juvenile Justice Center, to fund the Marine Patrol Division, to modernize the 911 System, the EMS Division, the counties’ 900 MHz system, etc. from 2007 to the present.
The minutes, though, are not only about Commissioner Rich, but about the manner in which every commissioner conducted business as usual with taxpayer money. The remodeling of the courthouse is but one example. The printed minutes do not indicate that any voting by citizens took place on the major projects, nor any discussions about hiring a contract attorney or a project manager for the courthouse, or a disclosure of the county’s budget and obligations.
The printed minutes do indicate that on March 29, 2001, Commissioner Rasor “…moved to table the courthouse abatement project until documentation from Ginno and LCA , and a resolution from the Clerk’s Office regarding the funding project, are received,” and that on Nov. 27, 2012, Commissioner Mike Nielsen moved to “… request the Attorney General provide an opinion regarding the legality of transferring funds.”
Between those dates, a lot of questioning and uncertainty went on and presumably the audio recordings of the meetings will reveal a lot.
The printed minutes do not indicate that any of the commissioners, nor the county clerk, nor the county treasurer did anything criminally wrong. It appears, though, that they all were in the habit of doing business the way it had always been done. We now know that was incorrect.
We all should thank commissioners Mike Nielsen and Cornel Rasor for risking their reputations to press for more correct financial management. We’ll see if it stands.
JEREMY CONLIN
Cocolalla