LETTER: A manufactured crisis
A manufactured crisis
Washington County Commissioner Diana Irey Vaughan’s crisis in the county’s finance department, as reported in the Observer-Reporter last Thursday, is a self-inflicted wound.
Josh Hatfield’s exit from the position had been known widely and expected for quite some time. If the commissioners in control of the county, Irey Vaughan and Larry Maggi, had taken prudent early steps to interview and prepare for Hatfield’s exit, there would be no crisis.
Do we wait for a bridge to fall down before we repair it? In fact, every position that is now open should have been dealt with in this anticipatory manner. The private sector would never have let this crisis develop. It is a complete demonstration of incompetence on the behalf of Irey Vaughan and Maggi.
This has the smell of the “Iacocca syndrome,” where the Chrysler CEO damaged the company he left behind so that people would say that only Lee Iacocca could do the job, when, in fact, he committed the worst management betrayal by not setting into motion a strategy and training leaders that would maintain the success of the enterprise. I am afraid the county is getting set up like Chrysler.
I, for one, can’t wait for regime change.
Tom Flickinger
Washington
Tom Flickinger is the treasurer of Washington County.