First, Stabilize The Patient

My wife loves TV medical dramas, from ER to House to most recently The Pitt.  If it’s an hour long show that takes place in a hospital, chances are she’s seen every episode.  These TV shows more often than not begin with some poor shlep being wheeled into the ER, afflicted with some sort of massive physical trauma that the main characters have to spend the remainder of the episode trying to save.

I think our Bourbon County government is like one of those patients right now, more specifically I liken it to someone who has been sprayed with machine gun fire and is bleeding out from a million different holes.  I know a small minority might dispute this fact, but our County now has an independent board made up of bankers, CPAs, and other financial pros, and they’ve all pored over the numbers and come to the same conclusion – Bourbon County is just about broke.

Now, in all of these TV shows, the first thing the nurses and doctors try to do is stabilize the patient.  If they don’t do that, and some well meaning but young, inexperienced doc or nurse tries some invasive procedure on the patient before stabilizing them, then the patient “crashes” and dies.  From watching recent County Commission meetings, I fear that in their rush to “fix” the bleeding, our new Commissioners, who I think have nothing but the best intentions, may end up crashing the patient.  To take the medical analogy a step further, when I watch the Commission meetings, I keep waiting to hear the word “stabilize”, but more often than not I get the feeling they’re gearing up for mass amputation, which I believe would be a fatal mistake.

The learning curve of a County Commissioner is a pretty steep one.  It’s a unique job and it takes time to learn the ins and outs of each department, what they do, and who does what.  This is not something that can be accomplished in six or eight months – it’s just not.  Trust has to be built, relationships have to be built, and only then can you get a good feel for how the machine operates, and in turn how it might operate better and more efficiently.

At the beginning of this year, morale in our County government was pretty much in the toilet.  Events I won’t get into here, along with talk of doom and gloom, outsourcing, and cuts have sunk that morale even further, and at this point we’re gonna need to call Roto-Rooter to get it back up.  That’s not to say these things shouldn’t be discussed – every rural county with a declining population is, and these are conversations that need to be had, but not as topics sprung with a few days notice on an unsuspecting workforce.  I genuinely believe all three of our County Commissioners are acting in good faith on what they think is best for Bourbon County, but change is a slow and tedious process in local government, and trying to rush change usually leads to disaster.

There is a LOT to fix, and by the time all is said and done, Bourbon County may come out looking more like Robocop than the county it first entered the ER as, but that process has to be given time.  To our Commissioners, I say this – go slow.  I’m not saying rubber stamp every budget request that comes through this year, I’m just saying get the lay of the land, give yourselves some time to learn the job and build relationships, and then make the process of improving efficiency a bottom-up effort instead of a top down mandate.

You won’t accomplish this by Christmas – it’s not humanly possible, and it’s going to be a multi-year process.  Study our neighboring counties that are doing well and see how their offices are staffed and run – the beautiful thing about local government is that there is no problem out there that somebody hasn’t run into before and learned how to solve.  That being said, there are no quick fixes, at least ones that won’t leave the patient worse off than they were when they first got wheeled into your Operating Room.  Right now that patient is in a precarious state – what you do next will determine whether we’re headed for recovery or a crash.  The good news is that, contrary to what you might read on Facebook, you have time.

Nick Graham
Uniontown, KS

Note: FortScott.biz publishes opinion pieces with a variety of perspectives. If you would like to share your opinion, please send a letter to [email protected].