EDITORIAL: Who do you believe in Barrow?

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more muddled in Barrow County politics, it does.

The conclusion of hearings last week at which county CFO Beth Horacek challenged an April suspension by board of commissioners chairman Danny Yearwood for allegedly being “untruthful” left everyone scratching their heads.

The county’s personnel review board ruled that the suspension be upheld, but also that it didn’t believe Horacek had been “untruthful.”

The board apparently wanted to split some fine hairs in its ruling — on the one hand upholding the county, while on the other hand trying to repair Horacek’s reputation by saying she wasn’t a dishonest financial officer.

Making matters worse, one review board member subsequently resigned, alleging the board had improper contact with some county officials.

To say the least, the entire affair was a muddled mess. Barrow County is in the middle of a financial crisis, yet its leaders are fighting with their own CFO, the one person whom they need to lean on for information from which to make critical decisions.

The truth here is that Horacek may have been selective in some of her explanations about last year’s budget process, which was the key issue that led to her April suspension. But given the turmoil of the last six months, it’s also likely that county leaders also only heard what they wanted to hear and concluded only what they wanted to conclude. There was a lot of miscommunication all around; Horacek was not totally to blame for that.

One of the ironies of this hearing is that “untruthful” comments appear to be going viral in Barrow County. Yearwood handed down Horacek’s suspension for lying, but while he was on the stand at the hearing, he was “untruthful” himself when he said this newspaper had misquoted him in an April news article about the suspension.
This newspaper didn’t misquote Mr. Yearwood and he knows it — he later apologized to a Barrow Journal reporter for his lack of fortitude on the stand in having said he’d been misquoted when he hadn’t. (It’s an occupational hazard; the messenger often gets blamed when politicians want to duck for quick cover.)

Whatever the final outcome of the Horacek matter, there is a serious lack of truthfulness coming from Barrow leaders that is undermining the county’s credibility.
One of Barrow’s slogans has been “Believe in Barrow.”

The question is, who should you believe?