More to do on treasurer

Dispensing with the obvious, that being the necessity of replacing Waynesboro’s treasurer, Stephanie Beverage soon must begin with something ostensibly more complex: figuring out how to keep the state auditor off her back. As she attempts this, the City Council might consider how to right the office permanently.

That would entail the city taking charge of matters and appointing the position rather than leaving it to an election. We’ve suggested this before. It’s a move the write-in candidate we endorsed, Jim Serba, backs. The evidence overwhelms in support of it.

Letting voters select the people who represent them is a thing for which we are strongly inclined to advocate. But not in the case of the treasurer. Here’s why:

Voters this year were faced with selecting from an incumbent cited four straight times in state audits for failing to perform the rudiments of her job, a challenger in Beverage whose qualifications seemed more tied to her mother than her own experience and two write-in candidates who joined the race just as it was nearing the finish line.

We’re confident voters made the right choice, despite our backing of Serba. Beverage has the benefit of preparing for months for the challenge and seems to have a plan for how she’ll sweep away the residue of Treasurer Sandra “Sandee” Dixon’s failed four years.

But the selections were limited in a way they would not be for, say, a city manager reviewing resumes as part of a state or national search to fill a finance director’s job. And the nature of the office differs dramatically from a council position. Voters care only that their treasurer makes deposits on time, properly secures money and gets pats rather than smacks on the head from auditors. Council offices determine the complexion of the community and, more important, how the public’s money will be spent and how much. Voters need a say in the latter but want only competence in the former.

That’s difficult to achieve if only a trifling few line up to absorb an election’s thankless pounding, like the sort Beverage received over her bankruptcy when she ran four years ago. More qualified candidates than her surely would have applied were the position appointed, but she also would not have endured the public scrutiny over her 1997 default on debts, which she blames on a bad marriage.

The City Council can let voters decide whether they want another migraine like the one this year’s treasurer election posed. Put the question up for referendum in the next election. If voters want the Treasurer’s Office to remain elected, so it is.

If not, Waynesboro might gain some security if the next four years in that office prove as troubled as the last four. There’s no guarantee that Beverage will improve matters. If she does, the city could always hire her. If she fails, the city could choose from a broader field of qualified candidates instead of a narrower one laden with question marks. Immediately is the time to consider and pursue a superior option.