Recently an anonymous person sent me a letter requesting that I look into nepotism in Glen Rose at the government level. The main basis for the complaint was whether there is impropriety regarding budgeting monies when two members of a family work for the same general government subdivision. 

I've thought about this quite a bit. Somervell County is an area in which a high degree of people who live here are inter-related, in some cases from generations back. I don't know what percentage of people have never left the county and remained here. In general, I think it's difficult to consider that in no instance would a given subdivision of government not ever possibly have at least one person that is not kin to another person in some way. 

If a person directly hired a relative or voted directly for that person to get a raise, that would be an issue. In instances in which a particular governmental elected official's vote doesn't actually count but is only done as sort of a ceremonial point to include his or her opinion, and the vote is for, say, the budget overall, probably would be nicer for the person to vote only in case of a tie. My personal opinion is that an official in that instance should abstain from voting, and more particularly so if close kin involved. Of course if someones vote does count and the relationship with someone that would benefit from that vote is immediate kin, that person should recuse him or herself from voting. Why? Just because no one can then raise even a whisper of a claim, right or wrong, that there was favoritism. 

Let me throw this out there. What do YOU think, Somervell County? What would you do?