"This had nothing to with the current administration and everything to do with my view that the expenditure of taxpayer money should be done under the full light of the public eye," said Benoit, who added that the change was warranted by "egregious examples" of misdirected spending by previous administrations. "Naturally, the county executive doesn't like this because it provides some much-needed oversight over the expenditure."
County Auditor Theresa Sutherland said previous executives have irked council members by rechanneling funds. She recalled a 1996 case in which then-County Executive John G. Gary, a Republican, allowed the office of personnel to purchase an $80,000 "voice response system" to handle health insurance enrollment and inquiries, a move that proved unpopular with the council because the system required yearly maintenance costs.
But former County Executive Janet S. Owens, a Democrat, said asking for oversight on transactions of only $50,000 - a tiny fraction of the county's overall budget -is a bit heavy handed.
"I could see that if you moved the amount up to half a million, but $50,000 just seems so low," she said. "I think it would be unwieldy, and if the council passed this resolution and implemented it, I could see them in six to eight months saying, 'This is crazy.'"
"Maybe they just wanted to slap the county executive's fingers," she added. "If I was sitting in the seat, I would be irritated."
In Howard County, another charter government, there are no restrictions on the executive's authority to move money within a department.
Arundel Councilman Joshua J. Cohen, an Eastport Democrat who proposed giving the council four appointments to the Planning Advisory Board, said his amendment was partly a response to Leopold's proposal in January for a fourteen-fold increase in the "impact fees" developers pay for roads and schools serving their projects - an increase that some council members considered excessive.
Cohen said he thought the planning advisory board, which reviewed Leopold's bill, rushed through the process to meet the executive's deadline.
The County Council eventually established an independent impact-fee advisory committee, which recently proposed a smaller, more gradual increase.
"The clumsy manner in which the administration handled the impact fee issue highlighted the fact that the planning advisory board - despite its banner as an independent body - actually is in reality too subject to the internal timelines of the administration," Cohen said. "I think this charter amendment is a step toward more transparency and objectivity in county government."
