Asking questions saved Barrow from tax hike

We realize many officials don’t like that, but we see it as our job. Rather than take the “official” government view as gospel, we ask “why?” Sometimes we say, “prove it.”

For many years, nobody was asking “why” in Barrow County. That deficit of local reporting led us to launch the Barrow Journal in October 2008. The community was starving for information.

Last week, the aggressive reporting of Barrow Journal reporter Susan Norman saved Barrow citizens from what would have been a major tax hike of nearly $2 million. Instead, because Susan prodded and pestered local officials and recalculated official data herself, the tax rate will likely go up only ½ mills rather than two mills; and with lower property values, most taxpayers won’t see any increase in their taxes.

Such an outcome doesn’t happen very often in the newspaper business. More often, the coverage of local government news and its impact is subtle.

So what happened last week is unusual. Susan Norman is a very experienced reporter. She’s worked for a number of newspapers over the years in Georgia and elsewhere. In fact, she worked for this company in the 1970s while a college student.

That depth of experience gives her a unique perspective that can’t be found at most newspapers. She’s seen just about every flavor of government problems possible. Public officials can’t bamboozle her; she’s heard it all.

And Susan is a little unique in the fact that she not only understands the government budget process, she actually likes digging into the numbers. Most reporters shy away from that. Government budgets are extremely complex. It takes a lot of experience and patience to analyze government financial data.

Susan called me early last week and said there seemed to be something wrong with the projected revenue in the Barrow County budget. She had asked for more details and she had communicated with at least three county officials about the situation. In fact, she asked about one aspect of the data at last Monday’s board meeting, a question that nobody at that time could answer.

At 4:30 a.m. last Wednesday morning, Susan was e-mailing county officials about a specific discrepancy in the data. By Thursday evening, she had found the mathematical error. She did that by digging deeper into the data — actually getting copies of detailed county spreadsheets and doing her own calculations. (There’s a clear trail of e-mails between Susan and county officials that show how all this happened.)

That financial data is much more complex than it may seem. It’s easy to make an error because it’s a very convoluted process.
Based on Susan’s recalculations and questions, a group of officials met Friday to go over the information and discovered that indeed, an error had been made. Susan’s re-calculations were right and the county’s data was wrong.

So instead of raising taxes nearly 2-mills to meet the FY2012 budget, only a ½ mill increase would be necessary. The board acted this week on that new information.

I realize some public officials in Barrow County consider the Journal to be too controversial. We’ve reported stories that had remained buried for years. We talk about local issues that are “sensitive.” We give our readers data that in the past, Barrow citizens never had access to.

This is what good newspapers do. Most public officials want to do the right thing. But all too often, they get blinded by the job they were elected to do. They bow to pressure from friends or political allies. They posture for re-election. They find themselves out of their depth on some issues for which they have little background.

And sometimes, officials just make mistakes.

Some Barrow officials are loath to give Susan credit for finding the error in the county budget last week. They told another newspaper that previous calculations had been based on a “worst case scenario.”

And some citizens are concocting wild conspiracy theories about the issue; that somehow it was a plot to deceive taxpayers.
But the truth is, county officials made a mistake in the data and nobody caught it until Susan pointed it out. No conspiracy, no “worst case scenario.”

By having an aggressive newspaper asking questions and not making any assumptions, a community is better served in the long run whether it’s county budgets, or any other public issue.

Yes, I know Susan and her colleagues can be pests. They call officials at home late at night. They ask questions in what sometimes appears to be a confrontational tone. They file open records requests for documents that may seem obscure or unimportant.

Sometimes nothing comes of all that effort. The road to publication is littered with stories that were never written.

But sometimes, as happened last week, the persistent asking of questions makes a big difference.

Barrow taxpayers were saved $2 million in taxes this fall because nosey Journal reporter Susan Norman did her homework and asked questions.

You can thank her at:
snorman@barrowjournal.com.

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