Gwinnett County government reminds me of a ship without a captain on the bridge. We need a captain at the helm of our county government. 

My position on proposed changes in Gwinnett County government would be hire a CEO with impeccable professional public administrative credentials - a professional with the expertise to manage a $1 billion dollar corporation given the assets, budget and number of employees in county government. 

His or her salary would be comparable to that of a CEO in the private sector. Said CEO would be hired via a five-year evergreen contract with the usual ineptitude clauses in the contract. What the evergreen contract would do is keep politics out of the management of county government government. How? As long as the CEO was doing his or her job and there were no moral or performance issues, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners (BOC) would think long and hard before calling for dismissal of a competent manager due to politics. Why? The BOC would not want to subject the county to a possible lawsuit for dismissing said competent person without cause.

I would also eliminate the chairperson's position and increase the size of the BOC via two steps:

1. Overlay the BOC districts with that of the school board which has five districts.

2. Add two at-large commissioners. One would represent south Gwinnett County and the other would represent north Gwinnett County. This would increases the BOC from four to seven commissioners and eliminate this business of district courtesy. Although the at-large commissioners would have a larger area of responsibility, they could feel the overall pulse of south or north Gwinnett County and ascertain that what is voted on by the BOC is in the best interests of the citizens of south or north Gwinnett as well as that of the citizens of Gwinnett County as a whole.

Annually, the seven commissioners would elect one of their own as chair and vice-chair for purposes of setting the meetings agenda and running the actual meetings. No consecutive terms would be permitted. This would eliminate the possiblity of any kind of vendetta as noted in the recent grand jury findings.     

I am a advocate of less bureaucracy and not more, so the existing department heads would straight-line report to the CEO. This would eliminate the position of county administrator. This puts the accountability for running a tight ship squarely on the backs of the department heads. It would be accountability at its absolute best. I also propose hiring a public safety director with expertise in this discipline to report to the CEO.    

To simply keep the status quo and raise the chairman's salary is nothing more than the same old same old. Politics as usual. That's the way I see it.