BVU Board Still Needs Watchdog

Many Bristol Virginia residents harbor deep suspicions about the dealings of the city utility system.

Their concerns run the gamut from the utility’s debt load to an appearance of preferential treatment for well-connected job seekers.

Putting an independent watchdog on the utility board would have done much to ease these concerns. Instead, Bristol Virginia City Council opted – although not unanimously – for a lap dog. Bad move.
On a 3-2 vote, the council appointed one of its members, Fred Bowman, to serve on the Bristol Virginia Utilities Board. Mayor Jim Rector also serves on the board.

Both men have something else in common – their sons work for the utility. While not inherently unethical, these family ties raise the appearance of a conflict of interest. Even this appearance of a conflict is worth avoiding.

The potential pitfalls of this arrangement should be obvious to all. The board’s policy decisions don’t take place in a vacuum; they affect the utility’s employees.

For instance, one of the board’s duties is to approve the utility system’s budget. Skeptical city taxpayers might rightly wonder if Rector and Bowman would vote to trim the utility’s budget if such cuts had the potential to jeopardize their scions’ jobs.

Rector and Bowman also seem unlikely to lead a charge to reform the utility’s hiring practices, since their sons have benefitted from the lax procedures. Vacant positions aren’t routinely advertised, even though this is standard practice for all other municipal jobs in the city. If Bristol Virginia has an opening for a police officer, school teacher or city manager, the opening is made known to the public.

It was under this system that the Bowman and Rector sons were hired. The elder Rector was chairman of the BVU board at the time his son got the job. Bowman was serving on City Council when his son was hired. A former councilman’s son also works for the utility and was hired while his father was still a part of city government.

This smells like a patronage system.

Returning to the most recent City Council decision, Bowman’s appointment to the BVU board wasn’t the only option. Council could have opted for new Councilman Jim Heaney, who was also nominated.
Heaney, who campaigned on a platform of fiscal discipline and open government, would have brought some needed independent thought to the super-secretive BVU board, which seems inclined to rubber stamp any and all ideas proferred by Wes Rosenbaum, the utility’s chief executive.

Independent thought, however, doesn’t seem to be a valued commodity within City Council chambers. The longer-serving members of Council, led by Rector, opted for business as usual instead of change.

If there is a bright note, it is this: Heaney and reform-minded cohort Guy Odum, also newly elected, don’t seem inclined to complacently go along with the majority. They aren’t afraid to speak their minds and to shake things up. That’s an admirable quality and something sorely lacking in Bristol Virginia city government in recent years.

We encourage them to persevere in their efforts to question the status quo and lift the veil of secrecy that has surrounded some city dealings. Too bad they won’t be able to do the same for the BVU board – at least not yet.