The forced resignation of County Administrator Rodney Taylor continues to ripple through the halls of Amherst County government.
You’ll recall that back in the spring, Vice Chairman Chris Adams, along with Supervisors Don Kidd and Ray Vandall, succeeded in securing Taylor’s resignation. The fig-leaf reason supplied by Chairman Leon Parrish was that the county needed a “seasoned” administrator to lead it through tough economic times, though Parrish himself had earlier praised Taylor for one of the smoothest budget planning processes he had seen in his years on the board.
The true reason, it turned out, was that Taylor had confronted the board members about a suspected leak of confidential information regarding a criminal investigation of a now-former county employee.
The tempers of Amherst County residents are still simmering over that ethical debacle.
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To placate county residents, the board asked County Attorney J. Vaden Hunt to draft a proposed code of ethics and civility for study and possible adoption. He did, and it’s been sitting in the board’s inbox for a couple of months, untouched.
And it appears it will sit there a while longer, thanks again to actions by Vice Chairman Adams and Supervisor Kidd.
The proposed code requires public officials, both elected and appointed, to behave as ladies and gentleman toward each other and the public, behaving in such a way as to shore up the public’s confidence in and trust of local government.
The draft language also specifies that supervisors make any contact with county staff through the county administrator.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Adams insisted that portion was unfair to supervisors. “If we adopt this draft in its entire form,” he said, “then our hands would be tied to hold people accountable as we were voted in to do.”
Kidd agreed, chiming in, “I don’t think that’s fair.”
Gentleman, whether it’s fair or not is immaterial; it’s a matter of good management, good business and good politics.
There are only two positions in county government that directly report to the Board of Supervisors: the county administrator and the county attorney. Employees in those positions are regarded as employees of the board, undergoing annual reviews and performance evaluations directly with the supervisors.
Every other employee is in a chain of command up through department heads who report directly to the country administrator.
That’s the way any good business is structured; that’s the way any competently run government entity is structured; and that’s the way Amherst County government should be structured.
County supervisors are not supposed to stick their noses in the day-to-day operations of one department or another, doing an end-run around the county administrator or an individual department head.
Adams and Kidd should know that.
Drop the excuses for failing to enact this code, gentlemen, and get on with the public’s business.
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