Inattention costly for Chowan taxpayers

Chowan County Manager Peter Rascoe had a very, very rough first day on the job. Even rougher days are likely to lie ahead for his bosses on the Board of Commissioners and, unfortunately, for county residents.

When Rascoe assumed the county manager's duties last month, he says he learned the county - best known as the home to the historic town of Edenton - was close to running out of money to pay its bills and didn't have enough cash saved to cope with the emergency. Funny how that didn't come up in the job interview.

Over the past four years, the county's reserve fund has been all but drained. In June 2003, Chowan had almost $20 million in reserves but - as Pilot correspondent Connie Sage reported Monday - there was only $723,335 left as of last month.

Worse, after reviewing a decade's worth of records, the commission's clerk said she could find only one instance where the commission approved dipping into the reserve fund. The county's outside auditor said he had raised concerns with Rascoe's predecessor, Cliff Copeland, about the quickly dwindling reserves and thought the commission had consented to transfers.

County commissioners, however, have said they were unaware of the raid on the reserve fund. "To know that $20 million was spent and we didn't realize it was shocking," Vice Chairman Jimmy Alligood said. "I always thought the money was still there."

Imagine the shock that taxpayers, and voters, are feeling right now.

Rascoe wisely called in the North Carolina's fiscal watchdogs, the Local Government Commission, to investigate. The state's budget analysts found that the county had overstated its revenues for the new fiscal year by about $4 million, a violation of North Carolina law. The county has been ordered to overhaul its budget, and the state commission is recommending tax increases to straighten out the mess.

The first order of business, of course, is maintaining solvency. The county's 14,500 residents are going to face tax increases, a reduction in services or both. If the budget mess isn't fixed, the state will take over management of the county.

In addition to overhauling the budget, Rascoe and the state obviously need to get to the bottom of how the bottom fell out and exactly how it was allowed to happen. Copeland, who retired as county manager after 29 years in May, told The Pilot last week that "the revenue just didn't come in as anticipated." That's hardly a sufficient explanation.

The commissioners have scheduled a closed session for today to discuss "personnel matters." Given the circumstances, commissioners have an obligation to explain, openly and candidly, how they landed in this fiscal crisis.

It's clear the commissioners haven't been paying enough attention. The public surely needs to.