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When is enough enough?
Dear Editor,
When’s enough enough,
Bamberg County Council?
How many more times and in
how many different ways must
you publicly show your
incompetence and embarrass
the good people of this county?
Your obvious poor business
acumen, lack of long-range
planning, and inept personnel
decision-making have made us
a laughing stock to those
familiar with responsible local
government.
Your oh so many
missteps leading to the filing
of bankruptcy and ultimate
closure of the Bamberg County
Hospital are now infamous and
all but too numerous to
recount. You sold our
profitable nursing home for $3
million (without issuing bids)
and quickly went through the
money to prop up the hospital.
You spent another $750,000 in
county reserves on the hospital
while creating a revolving door
of hospital administrators.
Meanwhile, you paid (and still
owe) a consulting firm
hundreds of thousands to find
a buyer for the hospital rather
than following your own
procurement procedures of
issuing an advertised request
for proposals from qualified
companies. And for all this,
you ended up welcoming a
buyer that had never owned or
operated an acute care hospital,
that promised our citizens an
urgent care facility that it
closed within 60 days of your
ribbon-cutting photograph, and
that has sued the county for
millions. Did you ever perform
a background check, ask for
audited company financial
statements, or even seek a
Dunn & Bradstreet report on
the buyer? Do the words “due
diligence” mean nothing to
you?
Our proud county
citizens have agreed to give
you an extra $1 million a year
through an additional penny
sales tax to keep the county
courthouse from crumbling to
the ground; they should have
never been put in this position.
Had Council corrected its
myopic vision, it would have
set aside funds year-to-year in
a long-range capital fund to
take care of this and other
inevitable fiscal challenges.
You either forced out or
fired our previous county
administrator with no public
explanation as to why she left.
Now you’ve hired for
$100,000 a year someone with
a dubious reputation at best.
He’s being sued for $1.1
million by his previous
employer (Anderson County),
is being investigated by the
S.C. Attorney General’s office,
helped facilitate with or
without his knowledge a multimillion
dollar Ponzi scheme,
and admittedly had a longtime
extramarital affair with a
county employee he
supervised. This is the person
you chose to be the face of our
county government and to
oversee our valued county
employees? Did you not
perform a thorough
background check? If not, is
there no moral turpitude clause
in your contractual agreement
in order to opt out?
With your oversight, the
county is now running a budget
deficit. We suffer chronic
double-digit unemployment.
Our county population is one
of the few in the state that
declined in the last census
(thus our tax base likewise
continues to shrink). The new
penny sales tax you sought can
only hurt our county retailers.
And of course with no hospital
or even a 24-hour urgent care
facility, what new industry
would want to bring its people
here?
And yet in these difficult
economic times, a Council
member actually wants
taxpayers to fund a walking
trail and/or “wellness park”
you’d have to drive to reach
and with no regard to the
ongoing expenses involved in
maintaining such a boondoggle
at the end of an airport landing
strip?
Thank goodness two of
Council’s seven members
opted not to seek re-election
and will be replaced in
January. Hopefully the new
members will come with a
sense of fiscal urgency, much
improved human resources and
business skills, and a focused
vision for the future.
Remember the fable
about his subjects finally
recognizing the emperor wore
no clothes? Perhaps Bamberg
County citizens are at a similar
point of realization. For
Bamberg County Council has
proven time and again it sits
butt-naked before the public
and the media donned only in
incompetence and self-serving
agendas.
Walt Inabinet, Bamberg, SC
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