SNOW HILL — Commissioners Bennie Heath and Denny Garner said it’s time to stop pointing fingers of blame about Greene County’s financial dilemma.
But many of the residents have wanted to know since June who is responsible for the financial disaster of a budget — both last year’s and current.
“I think we’re all responsible for it,” Commissioner James Shackleford said.
The board member said he put his confidence in then-county manager Don Davenport, who retired in December. But if a tax increase was necessary to make the budget balance, Davenport should have been forthright in saying so, he added.
“I think he should have stood more for his recommendations,” Shackleford said.
Those who shared responsibility over the budget were Davenport, former finance officer Shawna Wooten and the commissioners.
Heath said he had confidence in the staff and didn’t see the “red flag.”
“I’ll just say that we all had a piece of this puzzle,” he said, “and we’re all in this together.”
Garner said there’s plenty of blame to go around, but to “beat it to death” hurts the county.
“The bottom line,” he said, “the buck stops with the commissioners.”
Chairman Jack Edmondson and Commissioner Jerry Jones said the omissions and overages of revenue on the budget put Davenport at fault, but the commissioners are to blame for not monitoring it closely. Edmondson said the board told Davenport not to raise the property tax by the proposed 5.4 percent.
“Nobody ever said anything about dropping back to 2 cents or a penny,” he said about the board discussion. “We just asked (Davenport) to make expenditures fit revenues, and it was not done.”
Jones said Davenport didn’t discuss certain elements of the budget and wasn’t “truthful” about what would happen if taxes weren’t raised.
“We paid a man over 90-some thousand dollars a year,” Jones said. “You expect him to tell you the truth and what’s going on, and he did not do it.”
Edmondson said, “Maybe we didn’t ask the right questions to get the answers that we should have been getting.”
He also said politics were involved, such as Davenport — “a likeable guy” — giving in to the department heads’ requests when the money may not have really been there.
The commissioners agreed Davenport was ultimately responsible for overseeing the work Wooten performed. Edmondson said, with Hicks’ evaluation of her and assistance, she may have still been in her finance position today had she not resigned when the heat turned up.
Interim County Manager Richard Hicks said the auditor was “pretty clear” in 2010 and 2011 the fund balance was in decline.
Hicks said amendments should have been made all along. If the manager doesn’t look at the line items on a monthly basis and their history, he “could easily be fooled” or “may not see something that happened,” such as a trend, Hicks said.
“Myself, personally,” he said, “I would not be comfortable with those kinds of mistakes, you know, in a budget I presented.”
County residents Jody Tyson, Carolyn Newcomb and Chuck Stokes put the center of blame on Davenport, but believe the commissioners should have been more aware — especially when the public raised concerns over budget items. Newcomb likened Davenport to a CEO of a company.
“Greene County was paying top dollar for a county manager to make sure that our finances were looked after,” she said, “that everyone was informed to make a wise decision.”
Stokes compared Greene County to Enron — making the books “look right.” He also said the commissioners’ reaction was a negative one — “damage control,” but the financial mess was bigger than damage control could handle.
He also blames the citizens for not being involved all along. But he indicated there are still questions to be answered.
“I think the county manager,” Stokes said, “I think he should come forward and confess to what happened and help us all to understand a little bit more about exactly what his motive was for cooking these books, like he did.”
Multiple attempts to reach Davenport for this report were unsuccessful.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.