Will New Year and new commission end corruption, dysfunction in Clay County government?

A court just ruled against Clay County commissioners yet again, and they couldn’t be more delighted.

That’s because two of the three commissioners have been replaced with the New Year — an overdue change that should alter the entire misbegotten direction of Clay County government.

The two newly installed Clay County commissioners — former county clerk Megan Thompson and erstwhile state Rep. Jon Carpenter — say they will join forces with the old commission’s lone voice of reason, Jerry Nolte. The result: Commissioners should finally, mercifully stop fighting each other, as well as obstructing a state audit of the county’s operations ordered up by citizen petition way back in 2018.

Tuesday’s ruling by the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals shot down the old commission majority’s latest of many attempts to block Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway’s effort to carry out the citizens’ wishes — and to find out once and for all what retiring commissioners Luann Ridgeway and Gene Owen were trying to keep from view.

But the ruling, as welcome as it is, is happily anticlimactic. Perhaps as early as its first meeting Monday, the new commission plans to withdraw all legal challenges to the audit anyway, and to open up the county’s operations for all to see. And that heralds a new day in Clay County, in ways no court ruling could.

“It is liberating,” says citizen activist Jason Withington, the audit’s chief petitioner and a supporter of the current crop of commissioners. “The audit is nothing more than a way to restore people’s faith and trust in our county government. The way (Ridgeway and Owen) acted to prevent it, it makes you wonder what they’re trying to hide.”

“True public servants should welcome independent oversight of all their work,” says Thompson. “I’m going to remove any and all obstacles that are affecting the citizen-mandated audit. I’m glad we’re able to move forward with this.”

“I support the court ruling,” Carpenter says. “I think it was an unnecessary lawsuit the county should’ve never brought in the first place. We ought to be complying with the Missouri State Auditor’s Office, and I look forward to that being the plan for the county in the very near future.”

Their voices are now added to that of Nolte, who fought a lonely, bitter battle for openness and sanity against his former commission colleagues. He waged that fight both in court and in the court of public opinion. He’s finally won.

So has the sheriff’s department. While diverting $1 million to tourism promotion, and as much or more to useless lawsuits, commissioners Ridgeway and Owen had also cut now-retired Sheriff Paul Vescovo’s budget to the bone — forcing him to successfully sue them just to provide jail inmates with food and medicine. Doing battle with the two former commissioners, he says, rivaled his fight against crime.

“There were some times that I actually felt that. I really did,” he says. “It’s really set this office back.”

New Sheriff Will Akin says wryly that it was “impeccable timing” that led Ridgeway and Owen to bankroll tourism promotion while cutting public safety and county clerk budgets.

No more tourism ads on Chiefs pregame show

For his part, former commissioner Owen says he’s proud of his 14 years on the commission and the infrastructure improvements made while holding the line on taxes. As for the lawsuits, Owen said the auditor had asked for “attorney-client privileged communications as well as confidential employee records.”

But of course that doesn’t explain why he and Ridgeway lost in the courts at every turn, and on the taxpayers’ dime.

Thompson says ending the wholly unnecessary lawsuits is just the start. She predicts the new commission will usher in an era of transparency and accountability, with such things as broadcasts of commission meetings; sharp reductions in secretive closed sessions; meetings held when working people can attend; and a restoration of public comments at commission meetings.

“These are just a few of the things that people are going to see right off the bat. We want to get to work right away.

“I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised.”

The new commission also is likely to reduce, if not eliminate, the old majority’s expensive addiction to high-priced private lawyers. “We’ve just been bombarded with legal bills,” says Thompson who, as county clerk, has seen them personally. “The days of our current commission are over. We’re not going back to that. We’re moving forward to something better in ‘21.”

Withington, who’s given much of his spare time to exposing and reforming Clay County government these past few years, recently questioned on social media the county’s decision to spend more than $1 million a year on tourism advertising. He noticed it recently on a Kansas City Chiefs’ radio pregame show. To spend such hard-earned taxpayer money on tourism ads in a pandemic — and when sheriff’s deputies’ salaries lag behind those of competing agencies — is unconscionable in his view.

Thompson and Carpenter agree.

“Squandering a million dollars a year on tourism advertising during a pandemic is just one more example of county government wasting our money,” Thompson says. “That money could be better spent on the men and women of law enforcement.”

“Those will be the kind of things that are going to be looked at pretty closely, for sure,” says Carpenter.

Still, Withington could hardly be happier about the changes ushered in with the new commission’s arrival as of Jan. 1. “It’s time to get rid of all these negative headlines and just focus on the basics,” he says.

In fact, after years of fighting Clay County government, Withington has a new mantra: Make Clay County government boring again.

Residents would no doubt agree.