A Bubble Off Plumb

It seems the City of Watonga isn’t the only entity suffering growing pains.

Apparently, two members of office staff in the Blaine County Courthouse committed what was deemed a very serious infraction and were dismissed.

The employees said the infraction was never in the rules. The supervisor said her superiors at the state level felt it was a terminal breach.

Back in the not-so-distant past, it would have been a matter of course to do what these employees did. I have seen it myself and probably been guilty of it myself.

But, like the city, the county is moving away from bathroom plans written on a piece of notebook paper and previously acceptable goings on continuing. It is headed away from the old boy system to being run like a business. A business with rules and consequences.

I don’t know all the facts of the matter. In my opinion what was discussed in the open meeting probably should have been recessed to an executive session and discussed among the parties.

But the thing is, as the government matures it will face more of these situations because the old days, for better or worse, are gone for good.

I’m not on either side here. But there probably needs to be a process put in place for handling situations like this, rather than airing dirty personnel laundry at an open meeting.

On the other side of the coin is Sheriff Travis Daugherty. You may not like the guy, but when an elected official says in a public meeting, “In the interest of transparency,” it makes any journalist worth their notepad sit up and take notice.

In this instance, the sheriff was letting the commissioners know his family member had been involved in a domestic dispute. To his credit, he did not insert himself in the situation, instead directing his deputies to respond to the call. They made sure the two parties didn’t leave together. And to his credit, he told the tale himself rather than letting scuttlebutt or keyboard warriors take control. He wants to advise the municipality in which this happened on best practices. These are all good ideas and show remarkable restraint on his part.

And again, whether we like the changes or not, they are coming and the county as well as the city must keep up with them. It’s time the town and the county were run like businesses, because at the end of the day, they are. Their business is the people’s business and I, for one, will champion it transitioning from the bad old days to a clearcut, modern way of doing things.