During the years that I covered Ashe County government, I listened to scores of complaints about, now former, county manager Dan McMillan generated by one particular rumor mill or the other. I myself could never pin anything to him that wasn’t circumstantial or too thin to corroborate, but that didn’t stop the mills from grinding away.
This past week when word surfaced that McMillan was stepping down as county manager, I wasn’t surprised in the least. I also wasn’t surprised that the commissioners were so silent about it. Without McMillan to tell them what to say, it may be some time before they find their own voice.
McMillan’s control over the direction of the county gave me the impression from my first council meeting until my last, that he was running the commissioners, not the other way around. Some of you reading this have heard me say so before and conversations I have had with past and present commissioners have led me to believe that McMillan was prone to overstepping his bounds. Something he complained about with other county employees.
No, I wasn’t shocked to see the McMillan era come to an abrupt end, but I have been surprised at the coverage such an important story has been given by our local news outlets.
While both newspapers covered the story and repeated the non-statement statements of Judy Poe and Pat Mitchell, and printed excerpts of McMillan’s resignation letter, there was no digging done as to the many possible whys. Instead of putting a bow on the story our local media has left it as questionable as a UFO sighting. Something happened, but we can’t really be sure what it was.
The Mountain Times online, not the Ashe Mountain Times, reported that McMillan was leaving just three months shy of retirement and would receive a severance through the end of the year that will make him eligible for retirement benefits. Yet there was no reason according to Poe for his surprise resignation and the Times just said, "okay, we’ll accept that." The Jefferson Post didn’t even bother to tell us how much McMillan would be getting from the county’s taxpayers through the end of the year and neither gave us any info on his retirement package. WKSK just sort of followed suit and went with the commissioners’ spin. But to be fair, they aren’t really a news outlet.
Other questions I have are why don’t we know why Larry Rhodes voted against the resignation? Did he not want McMillan to resign? Did he want the county to fire McMillan? Did he want the county to give McMillan a raise to stay? Why didn’t anyone ask the board, why they didn’t keep him on the job until a replacement is hired? Why get him out so quickly? We don’t know because nobody pushed for an answer to these and other questions.
Look, someone in a position like McMillan had, with great pay, benefits and a good relationship with his bosses (the commissioners) doesn’t just quit with no reason.
Trust me on this; if a person quits a job in this economy, they have reasons.
Not to mention that people in powerful positions that unexpectedly resign are usually doing so to avoid pending disciplinary action and their bosses give them a chance to save face. It happens all the time.
But we get no answers to these and other questions, because the Post and the AMT didn’t do the digging needed to get them. They had time to dig or at least put the questions out there in the arena for debate, but they did neither.
That’s a major problem with media in general today, they want the quick and easy story to fill the page and offset the advertising but they don’t want to take the time to go for the meat of a story. Local media needs to do better than that.
Dan McMillan did not quit because he was bored, he did not quit because he had nothing better to do with his time and he did not quit because everything was great. Saying that he and the county commissioners were just seeing different futures for the county is a cop-out at best, and an all out lie at worst. The county commissioners did not accept his resignation because the county is in such great shape that they can afford to operate without a manager.
This county is in political and economic turmoil and McMillan had a large hand in it getting to that point. Mainly because the commissioners wouldn’t put any reins on him. No, there are reasons for his departure and we as taxpayers in this county deserve to know them. We as voters can kick commissioners out of office if they want to keep secrets. This isn’t a case of national security. Tell us commissioners, why is he gone, and did you do it for our benefit or your own?
I would suggest you begin to bombard the commissioners with letters and calls to get the answers. Since nobody else is going ask them, you better. After all, McMillan will be paid more by county taxpayers for sitting on his ass for the rest of the year than many of us will make working all year long. We deserve to know why our money is going to him and why the commissioners think it was a good idea to pay him more than $45,000 to do nothing.
