On January 31, Silver Spring Township officials agreed to swear in Kevin Gaughen as an elected Township Auditor, after having first refused to do so, even though he was elected on November 2, 2021, and no one disputed that he met the qualifications. The election is partisan and Gaughen is a Libertarian.

The township refused to swear him in because it believed that it didn’t need any elected township auditors, because it had hired an accounting firm. But that decision was incorrect, as this Reason story shows. The Reason story ran before the officials decided to accept Gaughen. The Reason story generated enough local publicity to persuade the township to reverse its earlier stance.