Hillsborough's flawed system leads to official squabbles

An exhaustive blame game played out Wednesday as Hillsborough County commissioners grappled with whether they should fire County Administrator Pat Bean, County Attorney Renee Lee and Auditor Jim Barnes.

But none of the commissioners spoke about the real problem.

Commissioners directed most of their finger-pointing at Bean and Lee, with Commissioner Mark Sharpe moving to immediately terminate their contracts.

Frankly, Sharpe and Commissioner Ken Hagan came across as impatient. Commissioner Kevin Beckner seemed mired in minutiae and he-said, she-said accusations.

Commissioner Al Higginbotham's call for Lee to be suspended — with no immediate action to be taken against Bean and Barnes — was simply unfair.

Commissioner Kevin White correctly pointed out the imbalance in Higginbotham's motion. Meanwhile, Commissioners Rose Ferlita and particularly Jim Norman rightfully delivered the reasonable tone needed to handle this situation.

With a potential $720,000 in severance pay at stake, not to mention potential litigation, there can't be a rush to judgment even if County Center's day-to-day operations are being hampered. After all, that's how the board got into this situation in the first place.

Much of the problem can be traced to when Beckner called for an FDLE investigation into the fact that Bean and Lee gave themselves 1 percent raises without board approval.

As a matter of principle alone, they deserved a stiff reprimand for the raises, but an FDLE investigation? For an annual cost of $4,000 in a $3.5 billion budget?

Really?

But the investigation snowballed the poisonous relationship between Bean, Lee and Barnes, a man whose ill-conceived, poorly designed job could only serve to contribute to the dysfunction that commissioners complained about Wednesday.

Ultimately, that's the real culprit in this scenario: the system.

The creation of an internal auditor — essentially a pliable watchdog for a commissioner who has an ax to grind with county staff — couldn't help but result in the kind of infighting that has deteriorated relationships.

Equally problematic is that the county administrator and the county attorney report directly to the commissioners instead of an intermediary supervisor.

Yes, I'm talking county mayor, a proposal voters may find on the November ballot.

It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room. The commissioners want to pin the problem on what they perceive as flawed performances because they don't want to own up to the fact that county government could function better if they conceded a degree of their power.

The contentious relationship among Bean, Lee and Barnes needed to be remedied by an overseer who could speak authoritatively without fear of retribution from the commissioners. A supervisor who could say, The three of you better learn to get along or I'll find someone who can.

A county mayor.

In the end, common sense tells us it's easier for influential officials to report to one boss instead of seven. I just don't know if the commissioners will ever look in the mirror and reach that conclusion.

That's all I'm saying.