It will be Rep. England & company who decide BOC fate

So far, BOC chairman Danny Yearwood stormed out of a meeting and the rest of the BOC seems confused about how the entire process works.
But what the BOC decides to do may not matter.

The bigger question is this: What will Barrow County’s legislative delegation do? Ultimately, what happens with this effort will fall into their hands, one way or another.

Typically, when there is some kind of proposed change in a county (or city) government charter, the local government will outline changes and vote to have those changed forwarded to the legislative delegation.

Under that system, the BOC would vote to change the county government from a full-time elected chairman to a part-time chairman and a hired administrator. The changes would then go to the legislative delegation, which would turn it over to legislative lawyers to draw up the actual language of a bill.

The legislators would then introduce the bill in the Georgia General Assembly as legislation; once it came out of the legislative process, it would then go before Barrow voters to vote it up or down.

That’s the general way these kinds of issues happen. But it doesn’t have to exactly that way.

What would happen, for example, if the BOC votes to adopt the citizens’ group idea, but Yearwood vetoes it? Would it be fair to allow one man, who has a self-interest in the proposal, to kill it when over 70 percent of citizens want to change the form of government?

This presents a dilemma for Rep. Terry England, Rep. Tommy Benton and Sen. Frank Ginn. Would they proceed on their own to call for a vote on changing the government even if the BOC doesn’t adopt a resolution calling for it?

There is no perfect structure for a county government. No matter how it’s done, every government is flawed.

Yearwood doesn’t like the proposed county administrator idea because he says it takes power away from the people by having a hired person running the county day to day rather than an elected official.

He isn’t totally wrong. County administrators and managers are somewhat insulated from the public. And if anyone thinks going to a county administrator system will solve all of Barrow’s problems, they will be disappointed. It’s not a cure-all.

But Yearwood himself is an argument for a hired administrator. He was ill-prepared to run a multi-million dollar government. To be fair, he inherited a major problem in spending that he didn’t create. But his emotional response to issues has undermined his credibility both from within and without county government.

It’s difficult to imagine that Barrow County will ever elect a competent county chairman who can run the government on a day-to-day basis. The names being tossed around about potential candidates to run against Yearwood next year aren’t promising.

So moving to a county administrator/manager form of government seems like a no-brainer in Barrow County. A vast majority of citizens want it.

Given all of that, would the legislative delegation balk at moving forward with legislation just because the current dysfunctional BOC might not approve it?

Regardless of what the BOC decides, it seems like the will of the people is clear and that Rep. England et al will have to act. If they have to ignore a Yearwood veto or some other BOC political games, so be it.

To a large extent, Yearwood made this easy for them when he stormed out of last week’s meeting without hearing the citizens’ group proposal.

If he doesn’t care what citizens think, then why should Barrow County legislators care what he thinks?

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.