Accountability acrobats
After the approval of the Weston County budget on July 15 by the Board of Weston County Commissioners, the News Letter Journal asked questions regarding a huge shift in the way reserves are reported in the budget, and we were forced to provide you with an incomplete picture after the board failed to respond to email requests for information.
On Aug. 5, the board finally provided some clarification during its meeting, in response to the story and editorial published by the News Letter Journal on July 31.
Before writing that story, the News Letter Journal sent a list of questions to the board — Chairman Nathan Todd, Commissioner Ed Wagoner, Commissioner Marty Ertman, Commissioner Garrett Borton and Commissioner Vera Huber — and the main budget officer for the county, Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock.
Without clarification and confirmation over what took place in the way in which the county budget was reported, we presented the information we had.
What we were able to determine is that the county’s reserve funds had vanished from the budget total and total available cash-on-hand items in the budget. The reserve account totals still appeared on the budget in the same place they had previously had been, but those funds were not totaled or added into the budget total as they had been in the past.
Todd said on Aug. 5 that this was done to provide a more accurate accounting of county expenses, and while this might be true, we do not believe that the change in reporting accurately reflects the amount of funds available to the county. The commissioners argue that some of the money is “encumbered” and therefore required to be used for specific purposes, but those are still funds available to the county.
There is justification to assume that the commissioners removed the reserve funds from the total to paint a much more gruesome image of the county’s financial situation. In the wake of tax cuts granted to citizens by the Legislature, local governments have cried that those cuts are killing rural communities. It is hard to claim, however, that Weston County is down on its luck financially when the budget total is $8 million more than expenditures because of the existence of these large reserve funds.
The board clearly should have discussed this significant change in reporting during their public budget hearing and again when they approved the budget — both of which are publicly noticed meetings. Your elected representatives also should have responded to the News Letter Journal’s request for an explanation so we could have provided that explanation to you.
In a ridiculous piece of irony, Todd claimed Wyoming’s transparency laws prevented the commissioners from responding to the email. However, anyone who reads Wyoming’s statute on electronic communications can see that the statute does not discourage the use of such communication to answer questions from the press or anyone else because the intent of the email is to share information with the public — which is the overriding intent of the law.
The statute states, “No meeting shall be conducted by electronic means or any other form of communication that does not permit the public to hear, read or otherwise discern meeting discussion contemporaneously. Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of an agency, shall not be used to circumvent the purpose of this act.”
Providing answers to the questions the News Letter Journal asked would in no way violate the open meeting and public records laws. In fact, it would have done the opposite and provided an additional layer of the transparency the board claims is so important to them.
Even more alarming is the fact that Hadlock, the county’s chief budget officer, had absolutely no potential legal excuse to not respond to the answers, yet she continues to ignore questions posed by the News Letter Journal, and a few years ago reduced the number of pages of budget information posted on the county’s website by more than 95 percent.
Far too many county officials go to extraordinary lengths to provide as little information publicly as possible, and that is a direct slap in the face of every constituent they serve in Weston County. They are paid a healthy salary and receive plentiful benefit packages to serve the people of Weston County — and that includes honest public discussion, especially about the use of monies they collect from taxpayers.
The News Letter Journal sought a transparent explanation for the change in the way their budget is reported in order to provide a more complete and accurate picture of the county’s financial position to the community.
Instead of supplying that information, the commissioners suggest that the newspaper, and the citizens we are all supposed to serve, should crunch the numbers on the budget themselves to determine what happened. That is appalling to say the least, and it is time these elected officials do better.
It is easier than ever for the county to readily provide information to the public, but the public gets less information from their leaders all of the time. Those leaders should take every opportunity given to them to explain the decisions they make, and community members shouldn’t trust them until they do.