Reives Reverses Position on School Budget Format

Commissioners Abandon School Budget Restrictions

Has Reives Gotten Religion?

For several weeks the board of commissioners have been feverishly positioning themselves to significantly tighten restrictions on the flexibility of the board of education to transfer county funds within its budget. (See Previous Post) Such an approach is being used in various forms in other counties to provide more financial accountability and transparency.

To Robert Reives it sounded like an opportunity to extend his tentacles into yet another recipient of county funds. (Look for documentation of this in a future post-ed.)

The Finance Committee, consisting of its powerful chair Robert Reives, Jamie Kelly, and Linda Shook, had voted just last Thursday to adopt the new purpose and functions budget format and restrict the board of education's ability to transfer more than 10% of the funds for any item without commissioner approval.

Last night, after the concept was first questioned by defeated chairman Bob Brown, Reives was arguing against rushing into such a big change without consultation with the Board of Education. This is the same Robert Reives who has ignored an April 23rd request from board of education chairman Bill Tatum for a joint meeting of the finance committees of the two boards. That is eight weeks, five days, and counting.

The other democrats followed their leader, as usual, and isolated Republican Shook as the only commissioner for the plan. She couldn't even get agreement to work toward such a system in the budget year to begin in 2010. Next, a token $100,000 cut in the school budget by Shook, which had supported last week, went down to defeat.

Just what did the board of education do to convince the commissioners to abandon plans to micro-manage the schools like they attempt to do the county government? Nothing. Not one letter, phone call, email, or press release of protest. Not even even a peep at all from a board of education known to have a strong, effective and vocal advocate as chairman.

If the board of education and its supporters weren't squealing, second guessing must have started and fears of falling into a trap must have begun to fester.

After all, Jerry Lemmond is still trying to win back the credibility they lost by failing to consider the school board's plan for Lee County High School and leaving those renovations out of the uses for the sales tax. Nope, this was no time to be sticking it to the board of education or for moving forward without consultation and open the board of commissioners to the charge of micro-managing the schools. The commissioners were simply stared down and blinked.

Has Robert Reives had a conversion? As future posts will show on other matters of business last night, the answer is no. It was just a case of cold feet.