By Suzanne Tate
Opinion Page Editor / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: December 29, 2009

Swept up in the holiday spirit, and recognizing the dedicated work of their employees, most everyone wants to be generous. This is especially true when your employees do dangerous and difficult work throughout the year to keep roads clear and citizens safe and when they have recently helped dig out from a massive snow storm.

But last week, the Sullivan County, Tenn., Commission failed to take action on a last-minute request by Sheriff Wayne Anderson who wanted to use money in his department’s budget to pay his 225 employees a bonus: $500 for full-time employees and $250 for part-time workers.

Anderson, who supervises the county’s largest department, found his request met with silence from all but one commissioner. It was a similar response to what he got Dec. 10, before the storm, when he made the request to the commission’s budget committee meeting.
In an unrelenting recession, at the end of the year, and when some of the commissioners work for the county, no one was going to cheerlead a plan that could cost more than $400,000. Instead, the commission did not vote and Anderson left the room muttering, “This will be remembered.” All 24 seats on the commission will be up for election in August 2010.

We expect this incident, and the prolonged hardships of the last year, will be remembered by many voters in Sullivan County. Also, we believe that most of those voters, many of whom have lost jobs in 2009, appreciate the hard work by county employees, but could not support paying for bonuses the county has not budgeted and cannot afford.

Read more on the opinion page of the Wednesday edition of the Bristol Herald Courier.