August 8, 2005 If you can't stand the heat...

We had commission committee meetings today. These are the pre-meeting meetings (like a work session) where we discuss items that will come up at the regular Commission meeting on August 18. Nothing big came up although there was a lot of good debate and exchange of ideas.

We will ask Charter Cable Company to dedicate a channel to the county for use in televising county commission meetings. Currently, we deliver tapes to Walters State Community College and lately there have been problems with the airing of those tapes. Sometimes, no tape was shown at all. Sometimes, the meeting was not shown in its entirety. (Once , this was because the entire meeting was not filmed. Other times, however, part of the tape would be shown on one day and the other part on another day instead of the full meeting being aired in one sitting).

If you can't stand the heat...

The last meeting of the day was the Audit Committee. Edwin Osborne is chairman. Members present were Maudie Briggs, Herbert Harville, Linda Noe, and Joe Spoone. (Ricky Bruce was present for an earlier meeting, but he left before the Audit Committee meeting began).

The main agenda item was a letter that had been prepared by Chairman Osborne and that was addressed to Finance Chairman Herbert Harville. The letter remarked on the difficulty (impossibility?) in getting answers to 2004 audit questions from the County Mayor or Finance Director. It said that the Audit Committee is at an impasse and noted that County Mayor David Purkey had "willfully" encouraged other elected officials and departments heads not to respond in writing to the Audit Committee and not to attend Audit Committee meetings.

The Mayor's statement urging officials and departments heads to boycott Audit Committee meetings a couple of months ago was very effective. No one attended the Audit Committee then, and no one attended the Audit Committee today. Today, as the Audit Committee prepared to meet, the Mayor told county employee Jeff Atkins and local news person Paul Meador, "let's go," and they did. They skeedaddled out of there, so you probably won't hear anything about what happened at the Audit Committee on tomorrow's radio news.

The boycott game appears to be part of a power play. Commissioner Osborne is in for a rough time as he starts to ask questions. It'll be even rougher if he actually insists on answers.

Of course, Harville stated that this was "political." Apparently, asking for financial information about the county is "political," but withholding financial information is not. The vote was 4-1 to send the letter that asks Harville, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, to try and get some response out of County Mayor David Purkey and the Finance Department in connection with audit questions that have been asked but never answered.

Harville was the lone dissenting vote.

Since he voted against sending the letter in the first place, I asked Commissioner Harville if he would have any conflict or difficulty in trying to resolve the audit situation and getting some answers from the County Mayor. Harville said "no." I didn't want to see Harville placed in an uncomfortable situation doing something that he really didn't want to do.

Harville then asked Commissioner Osborne if Osborne really thought that he (Harville) could get answers to audit questions when Osborne and the committee had been unable to do so in numerous prior attempts. That was a very good question. I guess only time will tell whether Herbert Harville can succeed in getting Mayor Purkey to provide financial answers where others have been unable to do so.

If Harville can get answers to the 2004 audit questions that have been ignored for months by the County Mayor and Finance Director, we'll have to make him the official liaison between the Hamblen County Commission and the Hamblen County Mayor/Finance Department.

Stay tuned...