by Hon. Frank McCarthy
Do any of you remember back many weeks ago, when newly elected Rep. Burroughs, D Bartlett, demonstrated her distinctive naivete when, at a gathering in Jackson NH. she proudly and vociferously announced to the press: Only a few weeks into the new session, and we have already passed the county budget! Of course, anyone with the least amount of grey matter knew that wasn’t an accurate statement.
Now comes the truth. The new, democratic led, county delegation has only one week remaining before, in accordance with state law, they become moot, and the budget originally proposed by the county commissioners becomes the officially adopted annual budget of Carroll County.
With that knowledge in mind, instead of rolling up their sleeves, and getting to work, the democratic county delegation, chaired by Rep. DesMarais D Wolfeboro, threw their hands in the air in surrender, and cowardly tossed their own budget back at the commissioners, telling them… in no uncertain terms. Here you do it. We don’t have the stomach for it. That’s right, you read it correctly. Due to an extraordinary lack of experience, knowledge, and courage, the democratic led delegation has relegated the authority vested in them, by law, to county department heads. That’s correct, they want $800.000.00 dollars taken out of the budget, to be determined by, as suggested, county department heads? Are you kidding me?
They actually did have a budget all but completed, but lost their nerve at the last minute when they were told, as a result of the bottom line, estimated to be an unparalleled, unprecedented 14% to 15% increase in spending. In the future, the taxpayers would make them pay dearly for such a drastic increase. Even by using millions of dollars of surplus funds, to lower the amount to be raised by taxes, they didn’t have the guts to present their budget to the tax payer. Rather, they chose a scapegoat.
As a result of their unmitigated cowardice the county will not see a new drastically needed “Financial manager”, noted as a “priority” requirement by the most recent county performance audit. Nor will you see one penny spent on the extremely important and much needed preservation of the registrar of deeds county archives. Yes, last week you did read, they put $300,000.00 in surplus funds into that needed effort, but this week, they cowardly took it out again, notwithstanding the fact that several million dollars still lingers in surplus. Perhaps, most importantly you will not see any form of a forensic audit, needed, if for no other reason than to be able to explain to the tax payer what happened relative to the following. How did several million dollars of surplus funds, over the past several years, according to the previous board of commissioners, disappear into thin air. Or be able to explain what was behind the probable illegal use of one million dollars of Tax Anticipation Funds in 2015, or the disappearance of one and a half million dollars from the new Nursing Home Bond surplus in 2014/15, and more, much more. Is the above not blaringly apparent evidence as to the need at the Carroll County complex for a new, properly trained and experienced Financial Manager?
When the current democratic delegation recently submitted a bill to repeal RSA 24:13-d surrendering all oversight authority and ability, relative to appropriation transfers, I was certain that was the worst that could possibly happen, I guess I was wrong. I wonder, is it all simply a terrible lack of good judgement, or is it, they just don’t care? All I can say is: Get out your wallet, elections have consequences!
Please see the airing of the county delegation meeting held March 21st 2019 on governmentoversite.com