From the KNS, New process for grants begins

About 45 volunteers gathered Thursday night to begin this year's award process for the Knox County community grant program, which doles out about $4 million to area nonprofits each year.

With no disrespect to the panelists willing to give up their time for a worthy task, is Knox County going to have to outsource all its operations to volunteers at some point, like when local government completely breaks down? (Or did it already and nobody noticed?)

First it was an ethics panel with some citizen volunteers, then a volunteer citizen auditor, now citizen volunteers to oversee grants. What's next, an all volunteer Sheriffs department?

Oh, and I almost forgot the citizen plaintiff and citizen jury who had to explain how elections and appointments and commission meetings are supposed to work.

And shouldn't these grant volunteers be getting paid for doing a job that was being done by Finch, who is paid pretty well by local standards? On the other hand, if it takes 45 people to do her job, maybe she isn't being paid enough.

What the County is really saying here is that they have someone who can't do their job because of conflicts of interest. Instead of replacing her with someone who can do the job, let's get some volunteers to do it.

Oh, and another question. Didn't County Commission approve all these grants that are now the subject of such controversy?

But the real question is, why is Knox County government so dysfunctional?