The Newton County Administration Building is less than three years old, so you would think it would already meet guidelines regarding handicap accessibility.

And yet we note that the commissioners at their weekly meeting on Tuesday voted 5-0 to spend $35,328 to make the facility handicap accessible.

We accept that this was probably mandated by federal requirements, but it doesn’t make fiscal sense in these tough economic times when people are being laid off from county jobs to spend this money. If the building had been planned right, it should have been handicap accessible to begin with.

Someone dropped the ball on this. Considering the costs involved when we can least afford such an investment, the person or persons involved should be fired, or at the least have a gold-plated reprimand placed in their personnel files.