OPINION: Censure vote has no teeth

Yearwood has been controversial for the last 12 months as BOC chairman on a variety of subjects. This latest fiasco and censure vote came after Yearwood issued a press release that some said divulged sensitive information about ongoing lawsuits against the county.

Yearwood’s critics, of which there are many, have called on the BOC to stem the chairman’s power, to oust him from office, or to make him stop talking.

But the reality is, the board doesn’t have the authority to control the chairman. The Barrow charter specifically gives the BOC chairman the day-to-day authority to run the county. Legally, the board can only set policy and control the budget; it cannot intervene in every dispute or every decision its chairman makes.

In effect, the censure action was mostly symbolic; a public paddling that has no teeth of enforcement.

The worrisome part of all this is that some believe the BOC should engage in litigation against the chairman to rein him in.

But that would be a mistake. An internal lawsuit from the BOC against its own chairman would be a disaster for Barrow County. Who wins or loses isn’t important; the suit itself would shatter what little dignity is left of the county government’s image.

Another option would be to legislatively change the Barrow charter to cut the chairman’s power. But moving to a hired county manager government, as some suggest, isn’t a silver bullet. Barrow tried that informally before the Yearwood administration and that experiment led to the county’s massive debt and financial problems. (That former manager Keith Lee piped up last week critical of Yearwood was the pot calling the kettle black. It was Lee who misapplied a payroll study that hiked county spending and led to many of Barrow’s current financial problems.)

There are no simple, quick or easy answers here. Yearwood is a maverick who shuns advice and whose temperament is ill-suited to governing.

But the people elected him. He’s the chairman. And while confrontation has its place in public discourse, name-calling and whining won’t fix the problem.

This board and this chairman have to find a way to work together for the citizens of Barrow County. That will require cooperation, not confrontation.

Both sides should try that for a change.