More on Commissioner Expenses.

This past Tuesday at the Finance and Administration Committee, we had a couple separate conversation here and here regarding Commissioner Expenses that I believe were productive and hopefully a launchpoint for handling Commissioner Expenses in a way that is more transparent for the public and fairer and more balanced for the Commissioners.

As I wrote a number of weeks ago, I believe the way we as Commissioners spend the discretionary dollars allotted to us lacks transparency in that we only report mileage and not the various other expenses we incur, from travel to per diem food as well as lodging. Likewise, we have no way of reporting to the public our discretionary spending that we make to attend events and to pay for our participation at community events. I believe that is an easy fix, and one that we will be looking at hopefully in September.

However, the other part that I believe we need to look at is to allow each individual Commissioner their own budget to manage and to make decisions as to how to best allocate those funds. Doing so will not only allow us to make better decisions about our own spending but also to do so in a way that doesn’t negatively impact other Commissioners and instread is more efficient and fairer to all Commissioners.

Edit - In 2010, the Board looked at this issue and came up with what I believe was an overly prescriptive solution. You can see screenshots from that discussion:

Looking at this 15 years later, having such a prescriptive lens as to which commissioners should attend which events seems unnecessary and inefficient. Simply allowing each commissioner to make their own choices with their own budgeted resources would be more efficient and fairer to all Commissioners.