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Commissioners query top attorney over discretionary funds
Next up on reality television, "Discretionary Funds Fight Club."
The spat between the Hamilton County Commission and the Hamilton County mayor's office appears to have enough drama for a whole season. Whether they can sell it to the public will be the big question.
When we last left the battle, the county commissioners had overridden the mayor's veto to put $100,000 worth of discretionary funds apiece back in the fiscal 2016 budget. They did this, it turned out, after being informed three days earlier that the money they wanted back to fund, in part, educational projects, couldn't be used to fund those type of projects.
Oh, no, the commissioners said, surely the state comptroller's office, which issued the opinion on the use of the money, did not mean what it said. Or maybe the opinion was based on outdated law. Let's ask someone else, they said.
In the meantime, one commissioner, who publicly accused the mayor of having his own discretionary fund, privately confronted a member of the mayor's staff who had publicly challenged the commissioner on behalf of the mayor. The mayor's staff member dismissed the commissioner with several profanities, and the commissioner asked the sheriff whether there were any grounds to arrest the mayor's staff member for his vulgar word choices.
Since the sheriff didn't believe there were grounds for an arrest, the offended commissioner the following week read into the record remarks that the mayor's staff member was a meanie - maybe one of the biggest meanies in history.
Since the county mayor was not present to defend himself the week before, he also rose to justify what turned out to be his not-so-discretionary spending in this year's budget.
Over on the other side of the courthouse, the alien that Miranda gave birth to 25 years ago showed up to get a license to marry the newest, shiniest parking meter installed on downtown streets. Tune in next week when
The names of the county mayor's staff member, the county commissioners and the sheriff are being withheld in deference to actual reality television stars, whose dramas couldn't measure up to the one being played out in Hamilton County.
But Warren Mackey, Sabrena Turner, Randy Fairbanks, Tim Boyd, Mike Compton and Jim Hammond should keep their Actors' Equity cards current.