Most of us as members of the

public are ill-equipped to second guess our county commissioners, who

have the benefit of county personnel and outside consultants who can provide

them expert accounting help, at taxpayer expense. Thus we tend to keep

quiet.

Nonetheless, we are right to

be suspicious about a lot of what these commissioners and other elected

officials do.

Consider the situation involving

the superior court clerk, for instance. She says her office has been swamped

with new real estate filings. That's believable.

There has been a lot of mortgage

refinancing in recent months, to take advantage of lower interest rates,

and that produces court filings. The problem here is that each filing

comes with a check for $10 or more for the county. Thus, if the county

takes money for these filings, it would make sense to consider the revenue

side and to provide adequate personnel to get the job done. It is not

tax money coming from the general taxpayers which pays for this service.

If the court clerk brings in the money, give her the personnel.

The situation with the sheriff

is not too different. The sheriff's law enforcement efforts do provide

court fines and other court revenue. Thus one ought to look at the revenue-producing

aspect of that department's operations, as well as at the payroll costs.

So perhaps our commissioners

are simply being pennywise and pound foolish in these two instances.

The Citizen shows how the forthcoming

county budget would cause a tax rate drop of .29 mill in the unincorporated

part of the county, and of 1.33 mill in the cities. Last December we saw

our commissioners give away a very large part of the county's local 1-percent

sales tax to the cities for 10 more years to come, amidst expressed fears

that the cities would otherwise have to raise their citizens' property

taxes.

Under the new budget the cities

could now raise their tax by 1.04 mill this fall, and their citizens would

still overall enjoy the .29 mill reduction with which unincorporated county

residents will have to be satisfied.

This shows our commissioners'

sales tax giveaway to the cities was not justified, and we'll have to

live with their mistake for 10 years. Gloating comes naturally to politicians,

but I seriously doubt our commissioners are doing the good job they like

to think they are.

One group we have to watch

out for is the school board. These people spend over twice as much as

the county government, and they show little understanding of key accounting

concepts. Our economy is in bad shape, we have high unemployment, mortgage

foreclosures are up, and yet these folks are oblivious to all that.

Helped by decreasing interest

rates, property values are going up much faster than incomes, yet published

reports show the school board is intent on milking increasing property

values for all the tax they're worth, conveniently forgetting these taxes

are paid out of shriveling incomes.

Another article in The Citizen

points out that every elected official in the county claims to embrace

the GOP platform. The key word there is "claim." I thought that

under the GOP Contract with America we were to balance the federal budget,

and the disillusionment with that part of the platform is big. Political

labels are used the better to fool us. Let us judge our officials for

what they do, not what they claim.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County, Ga.

[email protected]