Augusta Commissioner Sean Frantom proposed what he considered a “no-brainer” in discontinuing the practice of appointing city employees to sit on boards and authorities as voting members.
Naturally, those on the commission who have a track record of anti-transparency managed to end the conversation and kick-the-can down the road for later discussion.
Augusta has scores of boards and authorities that make recommendations to the commission and those boards are there for a purpose: to allow for more citizen input in city government matters.
The entire reason for this conversation is that when the city consolidated, the Augusta Land Bank was created; and now, the city is having a devil of a time reining in this monster that has proven it considers tax dollars nothing more than Monopoly money.
Investigations have shown “sleight of hand” land transactions and outrageous spending on dinners and parties, yet because of the way the land bank was designed, the commission has virtually no oversight.
In fact, the Augusta Land Bank’s only oversight mechanism is its board,which has four city employees specified among its seven members: the city administrator, planning director, tax commissioner and tax assessor.
This set-up is rife for corruption.
There is nothing to stop a rogue commissioner from telling the city administrator that an ornery landowner won’t sell his property to a friend of the commissioner. The administrator can then get with the others behind closed doors and bring the mechanisms of government down on the hapless landowner until they buckle.
That might seem far-fetched, but it can happen, and there is plenty of evidence of cronies of those on the commission and land bank staff getting prime property dirt-cheap while others are choked with legal fees just to obtain a sliver of property.
Frantom is right: transparency should rule the day, especially in this situation.
However, if the commission eventually does the right thing and makes city employees “ex-officio,” or non-voting members of boards and authorities, then the citizens of Augusta must step up and offer themselves for public service.
