Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1882-03-13
Tho (,aauty Audit.

The EcuTlis1cr hears that the county
auditors are "auditing; with the acom-
pass and square, Of the law In the FORE
ground and assures its readers that the
members of the present board " are not
dummies that can be worked by any
clique, faction or party, and if they do
anything it will mean business. They
will hew to the line, let the chips fail
where they will" We are entirely ready
to believe this of Messrs. Lightner, Reed
and Greider, and that they will justify
the confidence of their fellow citizens.
They will find good many things in
the financial report of last year to audit
with the compass and square, Chief
among these is the illegal and outrage
Gus payment by Commissioners Co.
BILE and Bushong, of $500 to Pro-
thonotary McMellen, and the still
more outrageous and uniustifia-
BILE payment of S211.5O to the late clerk
of quarter sessions, B. F. w. Urban, for
blanks used in his Office, for which the
county ought not to have paid. These
are samples of probably longer list of
improper payments for which those who
made them ought to he surcharged. The
auditors may find, as the INTELLGEN-
GER finds, that the McMellen bill was
paid upon the recommendations of both
the judges that he ought to be s. very
literally compensated - and that Urban
got one Of the commissioners-Bushong
to approve his bill because Judge Liv-
ingston told him he could "make no
mistake'' ~ in doing so, and got Coble's
approval on condition that Bushong ap-
proved job in which he was more inter-
ested. Nevertheless the single duty Of
the auditors is to determine and report
whether these bills and bills like them
were or were not properly paid.
Concerning this phase of these cases
the INTELLIGENCEG has heretofore
said
1t is not necessary to consider whether
they were valid claims or not in order to
determine the manifest impropriety of
the judges OF our court passing upon this
matter before it came before them
judicially. Ifthese claims were not valid
aud the county was not liable to pay them
it is plain that for the judges or any
body else to recommend their payment
was grossly improper. If they were valid,
and tho commissioners had refused their
payment, it is to be presumed the claim
ants would have sued the county for them
and the case would have come up for trial
before Judge Livingston or Patterson,
| who had incapacitated themselves to sit in
the adjudication of them by having pre-
viously appended two of the bills their
recommendation that the parties should be
livery literally compensated and in the
other case by Judge Livingston's advice to
the commissioners and the new clerk of
! the quarter sessions as to what the county
ought to pay.
OF course these bills are paid, and nm
less the auditors surcharge the commits
sioners with them, they will not get before
the court. But had the commissioners
resisted their payment they would have
got into court, aud does anybody pretend
that Judge Livingston or Patterson would
be fit to sit upon the case OF a claimant
whose services they lad already certified
" should be very literally compensated ?"
And yet with what propriety can they
thus incapacitate themselves for the duties
to perform which they are elected:
1t is for the auditors, however, to pay no
heed to what the judges may have improp-
erly done, but do their own work in a
straightforward manner. If they should,
in the execution Of their duty, raise an
issue which it will he embarrassing for
the court to determine, the judges them
selves will he responsible for that embar-
rassment. and it may teach them Il use
full lesson.