Another point to ponder about the Touart vote is – Did Commissioner Mike Whitehead overplay the severance/retirement package for the county administrator?
When the Board of County Commissioners met a week ago, there are two options on the table: 1) Follow the contract and 2)Allow Touart to use leave to buy into retirement system. There was some sentiment on the BOCC to vote for option 2 – although Marie Young made it clear she was against, right before she left the meeting for a doctor’s appointment.
Whitehead and Touart’s attorney, Mike Patterson, insisted Touart deserved more – allowing him to stay on administrative leave and continue to get paid for 9 months. The other commissioners balked at the idea.
It’s uncertain whether Option 2 would have gotten the three votes it needed at the meeting last week, but Whitehead, Patterson and Touart definitely misplayed it. The delay in the vote and the soaring cost of the third option built more public ire over the whole melodrama. Had they stuck with Option 2 as their preference, Touart might have built more public sympathy.
The other thing that could have helped was for County Attorney Janet Lander to have given the BOCC accurate figures on the cost of the options at last week’s meeting.