Tyrone has a new finance director, a former accounting manager and business manager who brings with her a wealth of experience, along with an MBA from Georgia State University. Aside from her credentials, including her most recent assignment as accounting manager for Peachtree City, Penny Hunter is a process-oriented fiscal conservative.

“I want it to click. It’s not rocket science,” Hunter said last week. “It’s just not that difficult. You just have to put systems in place, operations. You put a process in place. You let everybody know what the process is and what their role is. And everybody has a role. And those roles are all important. You get everybody to buy-in to that, get people that really want to do it and it clicks.”

Hunter’s viewpoint of the town’s finances is inextricably linked to her belief in the idea that fiscal accountability to taxpayers is a reality, not an ethereal concept. It is their taxes that run the town’s financial life, she said, noting the town’s responsibility to keep residents informed on how their dollars are being spent.

“It’s black and white, if you keep it black and white. And you should,” said Hunter. “We are government servants to the citizens here. I truly believe in fiduciary responsibility. This is not my money, but in another way it is because I’m a taxpayer and I do look at it from that standpoint. I also look at it from the standpoint that there are people out there working 70 hours a week and the taxes they pay are hard-earned taxes. So we have to be really careful how we spend that money. And how we are accountable to them. And they have a right to know how we spent their money and that it’s being cared for.”

The fiscal conservative in Penny Hunter does not have to be coaxed to the surface to be visualized. Hers is a philosophy on money management that can only be reconciled to the belief that the collection of taxpayer’s money is synonymous with an outright commitment to accountability.

There are a lot people in this country going belly-up. And there are those who aren’t. They’ve lived within their means and have been careful, while others think ‘there’s no tomorrow and the money is someone else’s, it’s not mine, I can keep asking for it and it will keep coming in,’” she explained. “That’s just not the way it is. It never should have been that way. That’s my philosophy.”

Prior to beginning her job in Tyrone, Hunter served as Peachtree City’s accounting manager, as Controller/Assistant Director of Business Services at Southern Polytechnic State University and as Business Manager at both Georgia Tech and University of Georgia. She holds an MBA in Management from Georgia State and a BBA from Texas A&M University.