Voters to decide centralized financing issue

Two motions came before the Cannon County Commission during its July 25 meeting concerning the 81 Act.

The 81 Act, more formally known as the County Financial Management System of 1981, would, if adopted, consolidate the management of Cannon County's finances into one department.

Currently county government, county schools, the highway department and the ambulance service each manage their own finances.

One of the motions considered by the commission failed. It called for adoption of the 81 Act. The vote was 4-4. Two-thirds majority vote is required for adoption.

Those voting in favor of passage were commissioners Glenn Steakley, Jim Bush, Brent Bush and Russell Reed.

Voting against were commissioners Mark Barker, Karen Ashford, Adam Melton and Richie Hunter.

Commissioners Todd Hollandsworth and Jamie Holloway were not in attendance.

Next, the commissioners voted on a motion to place the issue on the ballot for the August 2018 County General Election. That motion passed by a 6-2 vote, with Steakley and Brent Bush casting the no votes.

Steakley, who spoke in favor of the Act 81 before the resolution to adopt it failed, said he believed it was the commissioner's responsibility to decide the issue since the voters had elected them to make decisions.

"A few months ago I asked to have a conversation on centralized financing," Steakley said. "There were several reasons for doing so. I had an opportunity to serve on the Cannon County Audit Committee. In that activity I became familiar with our finance processes. I then served my third year on the Budget Committee and witnessed the decision process and how the funds were appropriated.

"Still another reason is I was feeling the pain of the State Comptroller's wrath due to our actions in 2016 and if you haven't been a commissioner, if you haven't been a member of the Budget Committee of this county, you have no idea what we were going through and we are still going through at this time. And, I believe, this should be a decision of the county commission. That is the reason we were elected."

Steakley believes the current process has and can lead to waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer's money. However, he was not critical of those implementing the current process,

"The problems we face is not with the good people we have in offices in Cannon County. They are good people, every one of them. But we are making them make finance and purchase decisions using an inferior process."

Steakley also said although centralized financing will put someone in charge of the county's finances, elected officials will still decide how the money is spent.

"Centralized financing will not tell you how to spend the money," Steakley said. "The commission will continue to do that. Centralized financing will ensure that what has been spent is authorized, is efficient, spent for what it was intended and that money will be accounted for."

Residents Ronnie Mahaffey and Randall Davis also spoke in favor of adopting the 81 Act at the meeting.

"There are pros and cons, we know, about (hiring a) finance director," Mahaffey said. "It just makes common sense to seriously consider that position. The budget of this county is not being cut as long as spending is increasing each year.

"Most importantly you get a totality of information from the whole county under one umbrella ... that makes a whole lot more sense than trying to piecemeal department to department to department. A centralized place should benefit you more than the way it is now," Mahaffey said."

Davis said, "I do not think there is anyone in this room who believes our current system is working. Centralized accounting makes sense. If you tried to run a company with budgets all over the place ... there has to be one guy in charge of it. We are completely out of control in this county. We will not stop spending. We do not have a tax problem, we have a spending problem."

Twenty-two out of Tennessee's 95 counties are currently operating under a centralized system. It is estimated the cost of operating a finance department in Cannon County would cost in excess of $100,000 per year, The amount of savings, if any, is not known. It is also not clear at this time if the school system would be required to participate,

• Also at the meeting, the commission voted to disband the county's Homeland Security Committee. In its place was created a Public Safety Committee. County entities who had representation on the Homeland Security Committee will continue to serve on the new Public Safety Committee.
County Emergency Management Director Justin Harris said the PSC broadens the scope of the previous organization, allowing it to seek and administrator not only Homeland Security funding, but any other grants and funding that become available.

• Resident Paul Alexander began the public comment portion of the meeting asking the commission to consider allowing citizens to speak at the end of meetings instead of the beginning "so that people can be more informed. This is ridiculous ... comments should be at the end instead of up front. Mahaffey agreed. "The present system isn't working for the benefit of the public." Gannon: I did a did a lot of research on this and different counties do it different ways. Gannon asked commissioners Mark Barker, Karen Ashford and Russell Reed to form a committee to come up with recommendations on how public comments should be handled.