Hamilton County's $679 million budget has no discretionary funds for commissioners

Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 5/17/16. Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger speaks to Kirk Kelly, interim superintendent and Christy Jordan, assistant superintendent of finance as they present the school budget during the Hamilton County Commission meeting on May 17, 2016.  on Tuesday May 17, 2016.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 5/17/16. Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger speaks to Kirk Kelly, interim superintendent and Christy Jordan, assistant superintendent of finance as they present the school budget during the Hamilton County Commission meeting on May 17, 2016. on Tuesday May 17, 2016.

The Hamilton County Commission did not fight for discretionary funds for individual commissioners at all during the 2017 budget process.

Last year, six commissioners - Chester Bankston, Tim Boyd, Randy Fairbanks, Jim Fields, Warren Mackey and Sabrena Smedley - voted to take $900,000 out of the county's $91 million general fund balance to use as discretionary money after Mayor Jim Coppinger left it out of the 2016 budget proposal. The same six commissioners later overrode Coppinger's veto of the amended budget.

Today, the commission voted 8-0 to approve Coppinger's proposed $679.6 million budget for 2017. This budget makes for the second year in a row that Coppinger left out their special project money.

Boyd, who recently called for the commission to have a frank discussion about discretionary fund policy and "to put the matter to bed once and for all," said he wonders whether discretionary funds will return in light of the public's silence on the matter.

"I have not received one phone call, not one email, not one text pleading with me to keep discretionary funds," Boyd said. "If they are not going to stand behind me and fight for discretionary funds, then I'm not going to spend political capital to be the stalwart for discretionary funds."

Boyd described discretionary commissioner funds as a controversial policy, but also said he has seen the money do some good things for beneficial programs that would otherwise go overlooked.

A Tennessee government watchdog group has described discretionary money as a County Commission slush fund.

When the six commissioners amended the 2016 budget to include discretionary money in June 2015, Bankston called the measure "the right thing to do."

"I have so many projects in my district that just don't get funded outside of discretionary spending," Bankston said a the time.

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