My First Commissioners' Meeting

Hey, I went to my very first commissioners meeting.

Susquehanna County has three commissioners. For the first time in a lo-o-ong time, two are Democrats, MaryAnn Warren and Leon Allen. The third is Mike Giangrieco, a man who could do voice-over work for the actor Joe Mantegna if his day job (lawyer) and other day job (county commissioner) somehow faltered.

You know, it would be easy to think the little dramas I witnessed today fell along party lines. I gather that just isn't so. Yes, there were a couple occasions -- most notably the passage of the 2008 budget -- where Commissioner Giangrieco voted in opposition to the Democrat commissioners. Despite several questions from the press and members of the public, Commissioner Giangrieco declined to explain his vote. Can't say why he did that; it gave him a rather churlish look, but it was clearly his right to vote without explanation. At the same time, I had sympathy with those who wanted to know why.

I'm not used to seeing politics up close like this. I'm used to politicians -- in both parties -- who have something to say, or just like to hear themselves talk. It was odd to see an elected official refuse to explain why he thinks he's representing the voters better by voting against the budget. Some of the public appeared to believe he might know something about the budget and if he did, they wanted to know too. Others seemed to think he just needed to explain himself.

Here's what I wanted to know: Don't these people talk to each other? My limited experience with government (I worked for New York State's Health Department for a while, and both my parents were civil servants back in the day) is that there's a public face to what's going on, and a private face. If Commissioner Giangrieco had a problem with the budget, maybe he should talk with Commissioners Allen and Warren to resolve that problem behind the scenes. And maybe he's doing that. I hope he is.

If he voted no simply to be obstructive, though, where was the political value for him? Why not make a mini speech during the public comment period? Why not expose the Democrats for whatever failure he might claim they're guilty of? I hate to criticise a guy I first set eyes on just three hours ago, but it's hard to see how he wins this way.

Same thing with the issue of gas leases. I'm new to this one, but two very articulate and knowledgeable guys showed up to the meeting to make a very firm and specific point about gas leases. In particular, they want the county commissioners to look at the possibility of taxing the companies that lease gas rights from landowners. Here's what I understand is going on: Susquehanna County is very poor in industry, but it's got a lot of land. Private landowners are being approached by gas companies who want to lease the gas rights on these parcels. It can be big money -- if you have 100 acres and get offered even as little as $50 per acre, that's $5,000 for doing nothing more than owning land.

What landowners don't understand is that as soon as they sign that lease, they own less of their land than they used to, and that can cost them real money. It's as if they just sold something tangible, and if they were to try to sell their acreage, they'd discover just what that something was really worth. To put some numbers on this, suppose the land had been worth $4,000 per acre. The landowner got $50 per acre for the gas lease, but on the open market the land might now be worth only $2,500 per acre. That's a loss of $150,000 in land value in exchange for a quick $5K. Doesn't seem like such a good idea.

I had a chance to talk to Fred & John, the knowledgeable guys (staunch Republicans, mind you), after the meeting. I gather -- and this is not my area of expertise -- that this transaction is heavily weighted in favor of the gas operation, but it doesn't have to be. Landowners can protect themselves, first by not signing in a hurry, and then by taking some basic precautions in the negotiation of the lease, most importantly by implementing some sort of land management plan.

Look, I'm as new to all this as you are. But I can see a real problem when out-of-county (and, often, out-of-state) companies take advantage of poor & unprotected landowners. At the very least, we all need to know a lot more about this. I'll do my part in this blog, but where are the newspapers on this issue?

John & Fred were both pushing the commissioners to consider the possibility of extracting taxes from the gas operators. Commissioners Allen and Giangrieco both said they were studying the issue. I hope that's true -- I get it that this is a real freewheeling, laissez-faire county in some ways, and not too inclined to have the government poking its nose into private people's business, but some concern for the citizens of Susquehanna County before they're cheated is maybe not such a bad thing. Oh, and getting these companies to pay in taxes for the privilege of cheating our neighbors? That's not such a bad thing either.

Which brings us to the oddest political issue of the morning. Commissioners Allen and Warren are in favor of creating a fiscal administrator position for the county. In a deliciously bizarre quirk of politics, there is a job description drawn up, but we (the public) are not to know what that is because there is as yet no job. Okay, but can't we at least know what the person would do?

From what we could understand, Warren and Allen both believe that a fiscal administrator would be the person responsible for all grant dollars obtained and administered by the county. Now, this I know something about! When I worked for the AIDS Institute in the New York State Department of Health (yes, that was 20 years ago, but some things never change), the grant process for federal and private dollars was, literally, never ending. I don't care what the amount of the grant is, there's a lot of paperwork associated with it. You have to apply for it, get it, spend it (and there's a lot of paperwork associated with spending it!), then report back to the grantor about what you did with the money. I gather there are some pots of money the county is eligible for, only it's expected to spend its own money then seek reimbursement. That's even more complicated. Paper, paper, paper.

We did get a little sense of how this process is likely to be run currently. Earlier in the meeting, the board voted to appoint someone to the Growing Greener II Advisory Committee. Commissioner Giangrieco acquiesced to the reappointment of three Advisory Committee members, but objected to the appointment of a fourth. In the course of explaining why the fourth was an appropriate appointment, Commissioner Warren explained that the Advisory Committee came about when the county received a one-time grant of $1 million, of which only $13,000 was left. Hey, cool, I thought. I wonder what they spent $987,000 on. Not that I doubted it was spent wisely, I just wanted to know.

Well, I wasn't the only one. Someone in the public asked precisely that, and Commissioner Warren hesitated. The questioner persisted, was there a list someplace. Commissioner Warren thought about this and said, "Yeah, there's probably a list on my computer."

Now, I'm not in any way suggesting that Commissioner Warren has done anything wrong. In fact, it's likely a sign of her real commitment to her job that she maintained a list of how the money was spent. But I can tell you right now, if that hadn't been a one-time grant -- if that had been recurring funds -- we would have ensured it was only one-time. With every source of funds I've ever had anything to do with, there's a report generated showing how the funds were administered or those funds aren't renewed.

Well, if all Commissioners Warren and Allen wanted was for someone to take over the reporting duties, I could see Commissioner Giangrieco's and Treasurer Benedict's concerns. After all, why pay someone to do a job that at least someone (MaryAnn Warren) has been doing, in effect, as part of her job. But the issue is bigger than that. What if there are other grants and funding that the county could apply for? Who even knows about these funding streams? And if someone stumbled upon one, who would write the grant application? (Sidebar: someone in the public kept suggesting that this was just a matter of filling in a form. Like getting grant money was just a matter of writing out maybe a single sheet of paper, double-sided. Uh, dude -- the last grant application I saw was three inches thick, with separate addenda. Okay, so it was for millions of dollars under the federal Ryan White funding stream, but the point remains. There is no "form to fill out." Wish there was, but there isn't.)

And to sweeten the pot, Commissioners Warren and Allen were prepared to make the position contingent on performance. If the successful applicant didn't manage to bring more money into the county than that person's salary, the line item would get cut and the person fired. You can't get a lot more fiscally responsible than that.

So why do Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose this measure? Again, it's hard to say. Treasurer Benedict raised the red herring of a financial consulting contract that no one knew about. I agree wholeheartedly we need to know more about that issue! But I don't see its relevance to the issue of someone with administrative experience who could oversee the process of obtaining grant funding and then maintaining that funding while seeking more and more funds. More funds means more for the county. Is there really a downside to that?

Even my new best [staunch Republican] friends, John & Fred, were in favor. In their minds, a fiscal administrator would be someone to see the big picture, including issues like their pet topic of gas leases. (I gather there's potential liability issues for the county based on current Clean & Green laws. I don't know about this, so I hesitate to suggest that Fred & John are right. It certainly sounded like something I'd look into.)

So, when staunch Republicans support a measure that is intended to make money for the county and thus for its citizens, why would Commissioner Giangrieco and Treasurer Benedict oppose it? We didn't find out at the meeting. Maybe Commissioner Giangrieco made himself available to the press afterwards for a probing interview. Maybe we'll get to read about it in next week's newspapers.

Or maybe not.

Let's just say, I'm not holding my breath.