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appreciation’
will cost plenty
Being a county commissioner became even more lucrative when all seven members approved a new county personnel policy that gives them a sweetheart deal for expensive health insurance.
The worst of it, though, was how the deal went down. The health insurance provision, which pays varying degrees of a former commissioner’s health insurance until he or she is 65, was buried in the 153-page personnel manual.
The News Reporter asked for a copy of the manual from the county staff so we could inspect it for just this kind of tomfoolery before it came to a vote, but County Manager Jim Varner instructed staff not to release the draft to our reporter, even though it was a public record.
Surely, the commissioners knew this personal financial windfall would not pass muster with taxpayers on its own merits and under the scrutiny of a public meeting, thus the secrecy.
Commissioners have tried to justify the move by saying that it should be viewed as a “token of appreciation” for service rendered.
That’s hard to swallow considering that two years ago the commissioners were ranked almost in the top 10 of the state’s highest-paid commissioners; plus, they are offered full medical benefits, among other perks.
National auto makers and airlines are just two examples of American industries teetering on bankruptcy because they put too much money into long-term expenses like pensions and other benefits like this one.
In case the commissioners haven’t noticed, the price of health care tends to rise dramatically every year. It’s shocking that no one has any idea how much this could potentially cost the county.
But this is what the public gets when government makes decisions under the cloak of darkness.
If the commissioners are so confident that the public will view this as a token of appreciation, they should put this item on the next agenda and take another vote in front of their adoring subjects.