Former chief: Mayor directed him to quit work on police budget in April
Former Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin responded on social media Wednesday to comments during Tuesday’s council meeting that placed responsibility for police overtime issues on his shoulders. (Gazette file photo).
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, 2:11 p.m. — Former Bardstown Police chief Rick McCubbin said he was surprised to read that the responsibility for the police department’s overtime issues in the current budget — discussed at Tuesday night’s city council meeting — was laid in his lap.
“I’m beginning to understand how George W. [Bush] feels,” he quipped in a social media post Wednesday morning.
During the council’s discussion Tuesday night regarding excessive police overtime expenses, both Mayor John Royalty and Councilman Bill Buckman pointed to McCubbin as the architect of the fiscal year 2016-17 police department budget.
Safety committee chairman Bill Buckman told the council the police department had spent 47 percent of its overtime budget in the first 3-1/2 months of the new fiscal year. Acting chief McKenzie Mattingly is taking measures to reduce overtime costs, Buckman said.
In his social media post, McCubbin said after he announced his retirement, he sent the mayor a text or email regarding a budget issue. In response, Royalty specifically directed McCubbin to do no further work on the police budget. In McCubbin’s words, it was a “hands-off directive.”
McCubbin said he was not aware of the final police department budget that was approved by the council and enacted July 1. I would have no idea what those [budget] requests were, nor do I have any idea what is in the budget,” he wrote.
McCubbin also disputed Royalty’s statement claiming that the 2016-17 budget was worked out between McCubbin and Chief Financial Officer Tracy Hudson.
“It is the mayor’s budget with council holding the purse strings,” he explained.
By the time the new budget was enacted, McCubbin “was already retired, gone, and actually I believe I was in Flordia at the time.”
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