Commissioner West takes action on county reports

Commissioner Tim West has taken to the helm in an effort to obtain monthly reports that should be submitted by various offices and departments of Van Zandt County government as a matter of record.

For months, the commissioners have failed to receive a report from every county office, a problem that has now prompted commissioners to take action.

In the commissioner’s court meeting Jan. 26, Commissioner West said he had been requesting for the reports for an extended period of time.

“We have been harking for these reports over the last several months to try and get people to get their reports in to us. We are just not getting them in. A lot of our errors are the result of not getting the reports in. There are 17 reports that should be coming in monthly. Any county office that accepts money should be turning a report in monthly. In December, out of the 17 reports, there were 8 that were not turned in. That has been pretty average every time. There are several that, at least as long as I have been on the board, have never turned one in.”

A list was provided to the Van Zandt News by the commissioners regarding what offices had not turned their report in for the month of December.

For their respective offices, Sheriff Lindsey Ray; District Attorney Chris Martin; Constables Mickey Henson, C.B. Wiley, Robert Tisdale and Pat Jordan; and Justice of the Peace Herbert Dunn have not filed a monthly report for December 2015 according to a list provided to Van Zandt Newspapers Jan. 26.

West stated he did not know “what to do about the problem, or even if anything can be done. But, we need to do something. You just can’t operate if you don’t know where everything is.”

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