NEWS
Opinion Keep Administrator As Is
It took the Schoharie County Board of Supervisors fourteen months to establish an administrator to oversee the daily operation of county government. Fourteen months of debate, hearings, research, and soul crushing rehashes of the same arguments for and against.
And in just one month since the law was enacted, supporters are pushing to amend the administrator to eliminate redundancies of responsibilities between the new position and existing offices, while opponents are pushing to abolish the whole law altogether.
Worse yet, when voting to set a public hearing on the new administrator proposals, supervisors only set a time and place to discuss the amended version and not the measure to abolish, squashing equal opportunity to continue the ongoing debate in the process.
Let us be frank for a moment: The Schoharie News has stood behind the administrator proposal since day one, because we felt a change in county government is beyond necessary. We didn't stand behind turning this attempt at a solution into yet another problem.
The original law as written served the needs of county government. The administrator, whomever the poor soul wound up being, would have the authority to oversee the operation of government through all of its faucets, including auditing, budgetary, and financial.
Guess what? The amended version removes all three of those aspects from an administrator's list of responsibilities because they overlap with existing offices, which apparently justifies their removal and the weakening of an individual not even hired yet.
Again, only in Schoharie County.
Perhaps we are not remembering this accurately, but wasn't the entire purpose of establishing an additional layer of government to serve as a check and balance to the status quo while instituting much needed oversight over all functions of daily operation?
Actually, we just answered our own question, because the answer is definitely yes. Furthermore, if we can't trust an administrator to oversee and work with our exemplary officials and staff in county auditing and treasury, who can we trust him or her to oversee?
With the aforementioned stated, we stand behind the original text of an administrator, and we are opposed to all efforts to either amend or abolish the measure, because if we can't keep this position to help Schoharie County stay on the upright, then we're doomed.
Again, only in Schoharie County.
Perhaps we are not remembering this accurately, but wasn't the entire purpose of establishing an additional layer of government to serve as a check and balance to the status quo while instituting much needed oversight over all functions of daily operation?
Actually, we just answered our own question, because the answer is definitely yes. Furthermore, if we can't trust an administrator to oversee and work with our exemplary officials and staff in county auditing and treasury, who can we trust him or her to oversee?
With the aforementioned stated, we stand behind the original text of an administrator, and we are opposed to all efforts to either amend or abolish the measure, because if we can't keep this position to help Schoharie County stay on the upright, then we're doomed.