LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Carolyn Huddleston, Liberal
If I were to tell you that one commissioner on his/her own went out and authorized the spending of $900,000 in County funds, I bet every one of you would know immediately that shouldn’t have happened.
There are State regulations that indicate the Commissioners can only act as a “body corporate and politic,” which means issues are considered by the Board as a whole, and decisions are made by the majority in a vote. Further, county business is supposed to be conducted in open meetings.
I recently discovered that there have been occasions when two of our current commissioners have taken independent action, authorizing the Health Department to submit multiple grant applications.
Tammy Sutherland-Abbott did this once that I know of, in 2023, and Scott Carr did this three times, once in 2023, once in 2024 and once in 2025. The commissioners would be expected to know that a grant often requires matching funds. If so, then Seward County money is committed to a program when the grant application is submitted. To check on how much matching we might be talking about, I looked at the list of grants which in March of this year Scott Carr had approved to be submitted. The key part of the signature page is printed above.
I asked for those grant applications and found how much was being allocated as matching funds in each case. This chart shows the amounts.
I was amazed to see that the Seward County matching on this set of grants was almost three times the amount of grant money the Health Department requested. That State Formula grant in particular caught my attention, for the potential award is $38,560, but the Seward County matching is listed as $650,000. I asked Brie Greeson about this, and my understanding is that this is money Seward County is agreeing to invest in expenses of the Health Department that aren’t funded by some other source.
Anyway, the point here is that Scott Carr committed $893,584 of County money when he signed that paper, and this action hadn’t been approved by the Seward County Commission. I think this is great evidence for why all the commissioners need to be involved in county business.
Also, citizens have the right to expect Seward County business to take place in an open meeting.
