A new holiday rush
Seems to us that Morgan County Commissioners Brenda Hutchinson and Stacy Dugan are making a mistake in pushing Bill Clark out of the county administrator post he has held for more than 20 years.
By a 2-1 vote last Thursday, the commissioners split Clark's administrator and economic development director duties into two separate jobs. Commissioner Tommy Swaim provided the no vote — with good reason.
As Swaim said, the day may come when the county administrator and the economic development director should be two distinct fulltime posts, but this is not the time. With a move to the new courthouse on the horizon and a budget crunch shaping up, it's silly to throw away Clark's knowledge of local government and add inexperienced personnel.
The rush with which this is being done is distressing. Hutchinson and Dugan decided to advertise the job this week and said they may interview candidates between Christmas and New Year's and make a choice. Crowding it all into the holiday season almost insures the list of applicants will be short and few will be watching.
Remember, there is no vacancy that they must hurry to fill. Nor did they bother to inform the Economic Development Authority that this was in the works, despite the fact that the EDA will have to provide more money if Clark is to be their fulltime director.
And it was downright insulting for Dugan to add that she wanted Clark to have an office outside of the county commission quarters so he didn't "hover" over the new administrator. Let's hope that's not how she treats other longtime public employees.
Since the split wasn't publicly discussed before last week and the application period is so brief, it's easy to believe the two commissioners worked things out ahead of time and already have a new administrator in mind. Hutchinson nearly admitted as much when she said they'd recently interviewed a good candidate and that she'd come to the meeting with her mind made up about splitting the job.
What happened to the open government they promised?
