After the Hamilton County auditor identified expenses with four legal vendors that she said didn’t receive proper signoff from county officials, commissioners are asking County Attorney Rheubin Taylor to provide them with more regular reporting on those agreements.
“We’ve got to be more transparent at least within ourselves about how we do reports and how we gauge the amount of expense that we’re accumulating,” Commission Chairman Chip Baker, R-Signal Mountain, said during a meeting Wednesday.
Commissioners passed a resolution Wednesday that will require Taylor to provide elected officials with updates when his office enters into agreements for outside legal help. Taylor recommended those reports occur during the board’s closed legal meetings. It does not otherwise change the existing purchasing process.
“I think the resolution’s intent is to continue a tradition in which the county attorney’s office … is not subject to the same purchasing guidelines as every other facet of county government,” Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp argued Wednesday. “That’s really what it comes down to. It’s meant to exempt them.”
Wamp said the county’s purchasing rules exist so the commission can provide oversight of public funds. He stated only the county attorney’s office has that exemption.