Please read the following editorial from the Sunday, July 19th, Hamilton Journal News and JOIN OUR MOVEMENT to bring about the change needed in Butler County to stop the abuses, excessive spending, and reckless disregard for the welfare and well-being of taxpayers and residents in the county by our elected officials:

"Sloppy" county practices must end

Nearly three years ago, Butler County Commissioner Greg Jolivette warned his colleagues that “when we sober up, it may be too late.”

That line was from his infamous “drunken sailor” letter of September 2006 when he reminded his fellow commissioners of the old expression “You’re spending money like a drunken sailor,” and noted that “we are getting pretty close to that saying.”

Suffice to say, commissioners are adequately sober now. Last week, they voted to roll back general fund expenses to 2007 levels, a reduction of about $2.6 million, their latest attempt to get the budget under control.

In 2006, Jolivette was protesting a plan to renovate the old county jail on Court Street and an informal agreement to let Sheriff Richard Jones buy a new helicopter. “My main objection is the fact that you made the decision without performing due diligence,” he said then.

Recent reporting by staff writer Josh Sweigart has revealed that Jolivette’s words were prophetic.

The county’s $1.2 million renovation of the Court Street jail was originally expected to cost between $600,000 and $800,000. Other county officials, including Auditor Roger Reynolds, are now expressing concerns about the lack of bidding or contracts on the project, which was done by Resolutions Community Solutions Inc., the agency that manages all the county’s jails.

Reynolds and county Administrator Tim Williams say they are sending records to the county Prosecutor’s Office to determine whether any laws were broken, while county commissioners are balking at paying nearly $182,000 in outstanding bills in connection with the project — all while the county is trying to deal with a budget crisis this year.

“It’s loose, it’s sloppy,” Reynolds told Sweigart recently. “It goes against the Ohio Revised Code,” which requires the county to bid out any work over $25,000.

County government watchers have surely detected a pattern by now of the same kind of “sloppy” handling of business. Consider:

• What began as a new $25 million emergency communications system in 2005, requiring an increase in the county’s sales tax, quickly bloomed into a $35 million project because the original cost estimates were wrong. Not all area agencies are on the new system yet.

• County residents are still waiting for all the shoes to drop on the scandal involving Cincinnati-based Dynus Technologies, which obtained millions of dollars worth of bank loans by misrepresenting itself as a county agent. Former county Auditor Kay Rogers has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in connection with the Dynus scandal, and resigned from office.

• The county owes the Internal Revenue Service some $400,000 in connection with not reporting employee benefits such as cell phones, uniforms and county vehicles as taxable income.

• Last year, the county was poised to implement a $3 million-plus retirement incentive plan for certain county workers before Commissioner Don Dixon put the kibosh on it. The controversy over the plan resulted in the resignations of then-county Administrator Derek Conklin and his wife, Karen, assistant director for the county’s Job and Family Services agency, and greater scrutiny of generous salary increases given to county employees.

• Commissioners were dismayed to learn last year that a tax levy to provide elderly services for county residents had collected $20 million more than was needed.

Taken together, these examples paint a portrait of a once-bloated county government with little financial oversight and even less accountability. And who knows what other revelations remain in the closet of our county government.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, we’ll offer that this “sloppy” kind of government results when one political party rules all significant elected offices — whether it’s Democrats or Republicans. (In Butler County’s case, the Republican Party dominates. In Cuyahoga County, where reform is in the air, the Democrats run the show.) Voters risk these kinds of problems when one party rules, and there are no representatives from the opposing party to serve as watchdogs when projects are initiated. Instead, we’re left with the bill, while Republican officeholders clean up fellow Republicans’ messes. On occasion, Republican officeholders in Butler County will point out fellow Republicans’ shortcomings but that’s usually because of internal feuds.

And now we’re left with county officeholders pointing the fingers at each other for any lapses in connection with the latest revelations about the Resolutions jail project. Sheriff Jones said awarding contracts and paying bills are the commissioners’ responsibilities; Jolivette said “the project was from first to finish a sheriff’s project.”

Regardless of whether the Prosecutor’s Office finds any fault in the way the project was executed, Dixon — who joined the commission in 2007 — sees the big picture, we believe. The jail project is a symptom of a larger problem, he told Sweigart, which is sloppy oversight by county officials. “I think somebody has got to come in here and audit everything we’ve done,” Dixon said. We agree with that assessment.

A business that operates the way our county government runs would not stay in business for long. Dixon has hopes that the county’s new finance director, Pete Landrum, will also serve as a budget and management supervisor, vetting future projects thoroughly and preventing the slackness and sloppiness that seem to characterize the county’s current method of operating.

It can’t come too soon — for a county government trying to deal with a $6 million deficit and for the taxpayers who foot the bill for these excesses.