WHO DO LIBERTY COUNTY COMMISSIONERS WORK FOR?

For most of the citizens in Liberty County it may be a news flash if you were to sit down and talk to any of the victims of the “carrot and the stick” approach our county commissioners have taken in their fiduciary duties as the keepers of the county budget over the years. But it has been extremely bad and extremely counterproductive for this county to have the budget used routinely to offer a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior by department heads within county government.

It may seem like a soap opera to some to even think that judges, county and district clerks, district attorneys, and justices of the peace all across Texas are subject to a system that can in the worst cases be used like blackmail by commissioners to force all of these elected officials to act like the local commissioners want them with what is sometimes little or no consideration for what is good for the county.

As we have said, using taxpayer money to force people WE THE PEOPLE have elected to jump through the hoops commissioners want them to can be very counterproductive to any department trying to do the people’s business. Perhaps unknown to the county’s taxpayers have already had to suffer through District Attorney Mike Little using the power of his office to extort people to do the things he wants them to do. And the taxpayers have already had to endure the wastefulness of the quarter of a million dollar trade off deal Commissioner Brown with his colleagues around election time every year so he can buy votes with temporary and expensive road repairs in strategic areas.

Liberty Dispatch is aware of the responsibilities the Founding Fathers placed on the press and the protections given to the press in the Constitution and just as we have begun to do with the abuse of office and selective prosecution in the District Attorney’s office, and just as we have done every four years when Commissioner Brown blows $250.000 we will not hesitate to report and investigate the abuse of the county’s budget process in the coming months.

The question that always remains important when evaluating public servants is “are they serving the public’s interest” or in this case “who do commissioners act like they are working for?” We expect taxpayer money to be spent wisely and to be spent getting the job done we have elected people to do and beyond that we expect smart, conservative asset management.