Letter: County spending record ugly

The Wall Street Journal now has quarterly financial results for many companies — less than 20 days after the close of their quarter. Beaufort County finally started putting quarterly general fund reports on its website this year. However, the last one posted is for the period ended April 30.

Also the county fails to post capital spending so its performance against original estimates cannot be measured. However, it does post results against the 2006 referendum, since we started using a FOIA request to get it.

The worst performance was on the Bluffton Parkway. The estimate we voted upon in 2006 was for $60 million. They have now spent over $80 million and the administration had requested $43 million more from the state to do the northern portion, which was in the original estimate. It is not done. If they had received that additional money, the total cost would be $123 million, or more than twice the estimate. The bridge to Lady’s Island and road widening were 40 percent overspent.

Did County Council investigate such massive overspending? How did it happen? Does council even care? In industry some heads would have rolled with that kind of performance. Council members should establish policy and do their job instead of spending all their time trying to micromanage. They pay themselves up to 140 meetings a year, but can’t be bothered with policy making or investigating massive overspending, which they may fail to know about for lack of reports.

This story was originally published October 26, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Letter: County spending record ugly."