Barrow finance director serving one-week suspension

Barrow County commissioners have suspended county Finance Director Beth Horacek without pay for a week for failing to keep them informed on how over budget the county was on certain expenditures.

Horacek’s first day out of the office was Monday, and she will return next Tuesday. The five-day suspension does not include Friday, which is an unpaid county holiday.

Commissioners decided to suspend Horacek some time ago, but allowed Commission Chairman Danny Yearwood to decide when to implement the punishment, Yearwood said this morning.

“We found that there were some things that had not been budgeted for, like the increase in the insurance premiums,” he said. “But she would never say that. She kept saying that we were over because people were losing their jobs and getting onto their spouses’ insurance with the county.”

There were several expenditures that were not accounted for in the 2009 budget, Yearwood said. Those unbudgeted items were partly responsible for the projected multimillion-dollar shortfall that commissioners faced at the beginning of the year, he said.

Horacek’s suspension comes just after former fire chief Robert Post served a one-week suspension and resigned.

Since a new commission was seated in January, Post and six other county government administrators resigned: Chief Administrator Keith Lee; Assistant Chief Administrator Michael Fischer; public development Director Guy Herring; animal control Director Stephen Eades; parks and recreation Director Nicole Smith; and stormwater management Director Jennifer Toler.