A three-year contract turns into a one-year commitment. A request for a 10-year tax abatement is approved for just two years.

Both of these happened this month, and both represent a new and perplexing philosophy of how local governments manage taxpayer finances.

On June 5, Lowndes County supervisors offered to split expenses with the city of Columbus for an outside company to keep major MDOT rights-of-way at interchanges in the city of Columbus mowed.

That decision came after the city council could not agree on hiring an outside company to do the work on a three-year contract at $75,000 per year. The supervisors’ offer came with one stipulation: It would pay $37,500 for just one year of the contract term. Supervisors said they could not make a commitment beyond the current year because a new board of supervisors would be elected in November, and it wouldn’t be proper to commit that board to an expense it did not approve.

It seemed like an odd position to take, and we were prepared to dismiss it as a one-off decision.

Yet just two weeks later, we saw the same reasoning applied by the Columbus City Council. During Tuesday’s council meeting, a hotel developer asked the council for a 10-year tax abatement on a $3.5 to $4 million hotel renovation.

The council has been receptive to these requests in the past and did not offer any serious resistance to the developer’s request. Again, however, there was a stipulation. The council would only commit to a two-year tax abatement because a new council would be elected in 2025, and the council did not want to obligate that council to a commitment it did not approve.

It has been said that when something happens twice, it’s a coincidence. When it happens three times it’s a trend.

We hope this reasoning ends at the coincidence stage.

First, it’s obviously self-contradictory. Second, it has the potential to be counter-productive.

Both the board of supervisors and city council serve four-year terms. The idea that a board or council can only make commitments for the duration of their term is easily refuted.

Local governments routinely make decisions that remain in place for much longer periods of time. One need look no farther than the 10- and 20-year bonds local governments issue to pay for infrastructure projects.

The idea that spending $37,500 in 2024 and 2025 to help right-of-way maintenance would put the next board of supervisors in a tight spot is unlikely, given the county budget is well over $50 million each year.

Likewise, balking on a 10-year tax abatement because the next city council will have to honor it is an odd conclusion to arrive at coming on the heels of the council’s decision to borrow $3 million to fund park improvements to be paid back over 10 years.

There may be occasions when local governments should make decisions with their terms in mind. For example, we have long argued that when council members raise their salaries or that of the mayor, it should go into effect only after their term has ended.

But that’s the rare exception.

A local government cannot function effectively if its decisions are in effect for only one term.

These two examples are small. Even so, the idea behind them has the potential to be unnecessarily disruptive.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.

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