Opinion : He's all out of F**** with which he can give

Editor's note: This story was corrected. I misunderstood the chain of events when the sheriff entered the narrative. His presence was REQUESTED as a witness to the camera removal. My apologies to the Sheriff!)

First of all, I want to say that this little county of ours rallied when it needed to. Unfortunately, it took that to probably spare a good man his job. I'm not going to beat around the bush here (I know shocker).

On this episode of "Benton County at its Best," we had, on the chopping block, the county's IT guy. You will never see him on the front lines of the county. He's literally located in the bowels of the courthouse, in the basement. It's nothing personal, the courthouse is just busting at the seams for office space.

Anyway, let me say a few words about Ben, the IT guy. Now I don't really know him at all. In passing we've discussed technology on a very surface level, because he is THE brains of the county technology. If you've worked with technology. you know it can be exhausting. Just to make machines cooperate like they are supposed to is sometimes exasperating, and Ben has to do that for the whole county. Every day. On the last election night, I know he was fighting every form of technology to get the computers to cooperate.

I know nothing about coding or much else other than type and hit publish. However, I know that when things go wrong, you call a "Ben."

Now, in this story, I will try to explain what happened not just today but starting on Valentine's Day.

In the Supervisor's room, there are two sets of cameras running. A security camera, where there is no sound. A second set puts the meetings online for residents to be able to access them when they get home from work.

At issue, was the security camera. Now in government, there are chains of command that MUST be followed. In Ben's case, there is a Security Committee that decides what Ben's role is. They bring the recommendations to the Board of Supervisors for approval and then Ben goes into action. Each county department head is on this committee as well as the Sheriff. An issue arose when the County Attorney cited law that said the security cameras cannot be allowed in the room, because SOMETIMES there are closed sessions, By law you can only audio record those and take notes. All understandable.

Then there was a problem.

Ben was ordered to take the camera down by the county attorney. Ben refused.

Then one of the Supervisors ordered the camera to be removed. Ben refused.

HR made a trip to see Ben and ordered the camera to be removed. Ben refused.

Imagine if you will, you are in charge of capturing on video anything that goes down on the county property. Now imagine a couple of people telling you, "It's okay to just take this one little, itsy bitsy camera out." Guess where something will most likely happen...yeah, right where the camera USED to be, and guess who would get blamed. Ben would. So he said, "No, there is nothing in writing telling me to do that, and you aren't my boss." Ben answers to the Security Committee and the Board of Supervisors for every action he takes. No one from that committee had said, "We discussed it, the board approved it, take the camera down," like things SHOULD have happened.

The background of this story, (I'm sure) stems from security camera footage I had requested from February 2, 2024. It captured the supervisors conducting business out of an open session. Well, being the pest that I am, I was going to let it go until I saw the HR gal walk in, address the supervisors and then return with a packet of information.

I requested the footage and reported the illegal meeting. (I might add that Vinton Today broke a record for how many times it was cited in the meeting, not a bad thing being a burr in the saddle, honestly.) That is where all of this came to light. From the security camera. Some of the supervisors had forgotten that there was even a camera in the room.

So anyway, back to the "who's the boss question." Our IT guy was just minding his business and being his geeky self, working away in the dungeon of the courthouse when everyone starts hounding him to TAKE OUT THAT CAMERA!

In a wise move, he said "No, not until there is something done in an OPEN MEETING that directs me to do so." He took a stand for what was right.

Between Valentine's Day and today's meeting, it was reported that our Ben had said some bad words to the tune of "F- this place," and implied that one of the Supervisors was corrupt. That put him in deep doo doo, because, you know the county's handbook says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness and Thou shalt not swear." All of the rules were read, and the noose was tightening.

The supervisor labeled as "corrupt" wanted his head on a platter, but fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. A stern letter of reprimand will be placed in Ben's file noting that he swears. He dared to lose his cool after the County Attorney's office, the Supervisors, then the HR gal came knocking on his door telling him that he should NOT follow the rules and just TAKE DOWN THAT CAMERA!

Do you know how rare it is to find a man with that kind of backbone these day? It takes a lot to put your job on the line after being pressured from every direction and to ignore the chain of command. After all if you just do this one little thing, you can join the good ol' boys club.

Ben isn't a good ol' boy.

Ben got frustrated and felt like he was being forced to cover the tracks of the Supervisors who "sometimes" fail to follow open meeting laws. Even worse, Ben implied that perhaps there was a hint of corruption behind the request. One of the supervisors educated us all on the definition of corruption. That's only if money is exchanged he said...

Worst of all, Ben also cussed.

Be like Ben. Follow the rules and, cuss a little, just not if you're a government employee at work.

Now if you're a Supervisor, Open Meeting Laws are optional, but cussing , my, my, my, that is a deal breaker and could get you fired!

I'm not particularly sure what Ben was supposed to do. He was being told to do something pretty serious, without proper orders. Ben didn't. So Ben decided to have the sheriff to go with him to remove the camera and be there as his witness. (I had this part of the story wrong…but it is now corrected, apologies for that!)

So anyway, thanks to the awesome support of the other county department heads, which included just about every department in the county minus HR, a good man's job was saved today.

I will add, that when a good man is pushed to the brink of saying, "F*** the county," when he lifts his head from simply doing his job, there's always a good reason for it.

Tracy Seeman, made a motion to put a strongly worded reprimand in Ben's personnel file noting that sometimes Ben says bad words, and Gary Beirschenk seconded it. Primmer voted, "Nay" for this slap on the wrist while both Seeman and Bierschenck decided that perhaps this was a bit of a witchhunt and called off the dogs.

And this my friends is how our county is now functioning.

Remember, be like Ben. Don't break the law. Follow the rules. And when no one is listening, cuss a little...again, not at work if you work for the county, "The Handbook" and all.

To watch here's the link.