We have gone back and forth seesawing on the courtrooms. We now have an extra 3 mil. If we sold the bank building where we have certain offices housed and took that money along with the 3 mil that just appeared out of nowhere because of incompetant budgeting would that not be a great down payment on a Justice Center. Then we could satisfy all the court systems. We also could move all those offices in the bank building into the courthouse. We could move the DA up to the Justice Center with the judges and clerks of the court. If you did something like that you would constructively use the excess fees and kill two bird with one stone. All problems solved instead of wasting all the time and energy seesawing and playing games with commissioners and their political agendas and power struggles for position.
Whether we are talking about the Budget Committee passing the buck to the commission or the commission passing the buck to committees for more studies on courtrooms, the reality is that making a decision and taking a stand takes courage and conviction. I am not sure which is lacking in the current county legislative body but there does appear to be a deficiency of some kind.
Well, the Circuit Court Clerk is suing the county to get more employees and has hired John Willis to do it according to the Clinton Courier. What is ironic about this is it is filed in Circuit Court overseen by Judge Elledge (who wrote a letter to commission in support of this endeavor). The paper also says that one of the clerks had said that Judge Elledge will hear the suit. Conflict of interest comes to mind. Hopefully the clerk was talking without knowledge from Judge Elledge since he has made it clear how he feels on the matter.
I still wonder why the Circuit Court Clerk is asking for additional employees not even a month after budget. If he is running his office properly I would think he would have known this during the budget process. I cannot say whether he needs them or not. That is not the issue. It appears there are games being played to secure what he wants. That I do not like. Wonder if the county law director will try this for the county or whether he will ask commission to pay for outside counsel. If so, maybe we do not need a law director and we can just hire an attorney when we need legal advice.
Molly:
Nothing like telling it like it is. You got it. They are elected to make the hard decisions but it appears they do not want to do that. They are too busy worrying about what the voter will think and their next election instead of doing what the voter elected them to do, and that is run county government to the best of their ability. That means making decisions, not passing the buck.
I guess since Judge Elledge has already taken a stand on this issue with his letter supporting the Circuit Court Clerk he would have no choice but to step aside because it is obvious he cannot make an objective decision. I think maybe the clerk the paper was talking to did not have the authority to make such a statement. That is Judge Elledge's call and hopefully he will do the ethical thing and step aside.
Oh did you read at
http://www.knoxnews.com local that Batman is not running for chair of commission this time. I guess the third time was a charm except for the people of Anderson County. Robin has not made a move yet. As Junior commissioner hopefully she has enough sense not to make that move. The three in the chair and vice chair races seem to all be credible people. I would hate to have to make a decision between Gillenwater and Allbright because I have found them both to be very ethical and honest people and both have the best interest of Anderson County at heart. I will say though if Mark Alderson is chair and he is from the county then I would have to give Gillenwater the edge so the city is represented. That position is a win win situation.