By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter

            One of the earthshaking events in county government that few people know about was the resignation of Jared Blanton, financial director for the Clerk of Court and the Levy County Commission’s budget officer.

            Blanton, a Certified Public Accountant and Auditor, an honest man, a hard worker, a stickler for doing everything by the book, was academically and intellectually well suited for a CPA office, but may not have been a good fit for the greasy environment of backroom county politics.

            Blanton resigned citing political factors outside the control of him or his boss, Clerk Danny Shipp, that he said made it impossible to remain in his job with the clerk’s office. He apparently just got so fed up with the situation, he resigned on April 10 and said goodbye to a financial structure he reshaped for commissioners, turning deficits into surpluses using conservative fiscal management practices.

            However, his considerable talent didn’t save him from politics.

            “While, due to the nature of our political environment, there are a number of factors outside of our control (yours and mine) that have made my continuing on in this role completely untenable, and we’ve discussed those at length, I don’t want those circumstances and external parties to be the focus of this letter. Rather, I want this letter to be about our office, what we achieved together, our staff and my appreciation for you,” Blanton wrote.

            Among the achievements he cited were correcting $3 million operating deficits in the commission budget and guiding commissioners to manage their budget in a way that increased operating surpluses from $18.4 million to $38.9 million in the seven years he was employed by the clerk’s office. All of this was done without increasing the property tax millage rate, he noted.

            The loss of Blanton revealed itself in the first budget hearing of the year Tuesday when things didn’t go well. Procurement Director Alicia Tretheway accepted responsibility for failing to add preliminary special assessments to the budget hearing agenda. The commission has scheduled a special makeup meeting for Monday at 5 p.m. to discuss the preliminary special assessments for fire, landfill, EMS, and roads.

            Along with the foul-up on special assessments, Tax Collector Michele Langford wasn’t ready to make her budget presentation, Property Appraiser Jason Whistler was on vacation and assigned his second in command, Randy Rutter to make the budget presentation. Few of the outside agencies that were to receive county funding attended the hearing. The commission discussed the EMS budget but with scant details offered. Actually, departmental budgets like EMS weren’t on the agenda.

            The main problem was that Blanton, the master budget maker, wasn’t there.

            Blanton handpicked Schonna McLean, a budget analyst from his office who had never made a presentation to the county commission and wasn’t trained for that position, to take his place during the budget process. She did her best in the hearing and everyone knew she was inexperienced and would improve as the budget process moved forward. Shipp hasn’t been able to hire a replacement for Blanton.

            “I know a lot of it backs up from Jared leaving. Jared had all those dates set up (for hearings) ahead of time. He had done a lot of investigation on what other counties are doing, how the economy is trending and what we needed to do,” Shipp said. “It was nothing for Jared to work way into the morning from home, and that was just in him. Him leaving put some pressure on me, of course, put some pressure on Ali (Alicia Tretheway) and put pressure on Schonna who has never done anything public. Schonna is good at looking at everything and getting it balanced. That was who Jared felt would do the best job. I think on paper she will do well, but to throw her out in front of the board and not have any experience was tough.”

            Shipp didn’t want to name the person that ultimately triggered Blanton’s resignation. He said, “There’s been some conflict in management, and it wasn’t in the clerk’s office.”

            “There’s nothing I wouldn’t say about that over there. It doesn’t bother me, but I don’t want Jared pulled into it because he’s through with it. He quit because he couldn’t stand it,” Shipp said.

————————-

Enterprise Reporting June 22, 2023; Posted June 22, 2023