Hart BOC Votes to Make Procedural Changes to Operations

A Hart County commissioner is calling for some updates of the County’s code of ordinances regarding special meetings and chain of command.

At their meeting last week, County Commissioner Joey Dorsey brought the issues.

One of the ordinances states a special or called meeting can only be ordered by either the commission chair or two commissioners.

Dorsey said he believes no one commissioner is better than the other.

“When I read this, it implies that one commissioner has more authority than another,” Dorsey said. “We’re all equal. All of our votes count for 20%. I’m am making a motion to amend this ordinance to say that special meetings may be called by one commissioner.”

Dorsey said the ordinance sounds like 20% of the county is not fairly represented. 

“My question is, what has happened to make you want to change this?” Commissioner RC Oglesby asked.

“We’re all equals,” Dorsey explained. “Why would you want to have 20% of the population not represented. This will essentially give the power to call a meeting to one commissioner. To say that you have to have two commissioners to call a meeting; that doesn’t make sense.”

After hearing from Oglesby and Dorsey, the board voted unanimously to change the ordinance.  The other change Dorsey called for was in the chain of command.

Dorsey called for a set procedure for the board to follow if the board chair is not available.

“We recently had a situation where it was not clear what was our chain of command,” Dorsey said. “Based on that I make a motion to amend the ordinance to add the following sentence, ‘In the absence of a county administrator and his designee, the chairman, vice-chairman and the remaining commissioners in order of seniority, shall be the next in the chain of command on daily issues.'”

The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.  Both changes to the county code will have two more readings before they are enacted.