Rick Badie's Gwinnett: Pass the buck — make that muck

It takes place at any grand opening or special event. Gwinnett County commissioners practically trip over each other to laud the staff.

Let them tell it, they wouldn’t trade department heads, supervisors and managers for the world’s gold. This bunch works hard, pays attention to details and cares about conducting business.

Given that backdrop, Commissioners Mike Beaudreau and Bert Nasuti have some explaining to do. What, suddenly, went awry? At what juncture did employees become so inept that they couldn’t put together a PowerPoint presentation on million-dollar land deals?

On Tuesday, Beaudreau’s and Nasuti’s written responses to a special grand jury report that centered on five deals for parkland were unsealed. Their moxie astounds, given the current state of affairs. A 10-month probe that ended in October resulted in the resignation of Chairman Charles Bannister and the indictment of Commissioner Kevin Kenerly on a charge related to bribery.

Yet these two officials didn’t offer a morsel of remorse for the undeniable prevalence of cronyism and taxpayer waste related to the transactions. Moreover, there’s no acknowledgment of individual responsibility, accountability or humility for what transpired under their watch.

Instead, fingers get pointed at others. Laid at the feet of county staff. They threw employees beneath the bus, and said personnel failed to sufficiently inform them about the land deals.

Yet in the same breath, Beaudreau and Nasuti purport that due diligence was performed when various board members posed two questions:

● Whether the purchases fit into the county’s long-range plans.

● Whether they fit the needs of a particular area and were staff-supported.

Wrote Nasuti: “There was not even one instance when staff did not support a purchase, or, for that matter, even intimated that maybe it was not a good purchase choice, was not a good use of taxpayer funds, or that staff may prefer another location.”

Wrote Beaudreau: “It seems the staff prepared more for their grand jury testimony than they did in providing candid information to some commissioners, when deals were in the pipeline and the need for accurate information was critical.”

We are to believe that, at most every turn, staff failed. So it appears to be the staff’s fault votes were taken on land deals involving millions of dollars with little or no information.