The White County Commission approved a resolution to revise its bylaws and streamline the county committee structure by eliminating redundant groups and consolidating rules.
White County Executive Kyle Goff said the changes reduce the total number of rules from 17 to 12 and consolidate several redundant sections. Goff said the revision eliminates the solid waste and purchasing committees to improve efficiency.
“This would remove the County Executive from the Budget Committee,” Goff said, “I’ve talked to CTAS about that is not best practice, and there’s only a couple instances in the state where a county operating under the 1981 act has the county mayor or executive on the budget committee.”
Goff said the duties of the solid waste committee will now fall under the authority of steering committee A. Goff said the purchasing committee was removed because its responsibilities overlapped with the state-mandated budget and financial management committees.
“It’d be easier to get a quorum,” Goff said. “You get more eyes on those beer permits as they come in.”
Goff said the beer board will expand from three members to five. Goff said the new bylaws were reviewed by the county attorney and a representative from CTAS.
“I tried as much verbiage as I could is copied and pasted straight from TCA code,” Goff said.
Commissioner Derek Hutchings said the commission should vote on the bylaw changes before appointing members to committees that might be deleted. Hutchings said the move prevents the commission from voting on positions for committees that no longer exist under the new structure.
“We have two committees that if the bylaws pass will be deleted,” Hutchings said. “So I don’t see a point in voting on either one of those two committees if the bylaw changes, and then we also will have two other committees that will have open positions that nominations can be received from the floor, so we don’t have to have another nominating committee meeting.”
The commission approved the bylaw resolution with 13 votes in favor and one member absent.
