Commissioner Julia Gouge charged taxpayers for the most trips last year among Carroll?s three commissioners.
She took 10 trips, with a total tab of $5,400, most of them to Maryland?s Eastern Shore, all for county association conferences.
But she says they provide invaluable connections and information.
Gouge, who has served 18 years on Carroll?s board of commissioners, has become a fixture at conferences for the National Association of Counties and Maryland Association of Counties, working on the national board of directors, as president of the national women?s leadership team and on several committees.
“It?s sort of like whatever you?re working on at the time, when you come to an organization like this, you meet people from all across the country, and all you need to do is ask people, ?OK, do you have a problem with this?? ” Gouge said while between committee meetings Tuesday at a conference in Washington, D.C.
The farthest trips Gouge took were for National Association of Counties meetings in December 2006, when she traveled to Columbus, Ohio, for about $560, and in December 2007, when she went to St. Petersburg, Fla., for about $530, according to last year?s expense reports.
It?s a small price to improve Carroll, she said.
The county?s made strides, for instance, in joining the national trend of becoming more environmentally friendly.
“I kept seeing the green, the green, the green, and I started thinking, ?How can we do things and start saving programs?? ” Gouge said. “So what are we doing? We?re now having geothermal in some of our buildings. We?ve been doing retrofitting in some of our buildings, but now we?re taking the next step.”
Gouge also said she learned this weekend that other counties with waste-to-energy incinerators often bury ash in a separate landfill and do not layer it with landfill waste the way Carroll and Frederick officials have been told to do.
