Enough is enough. ROD Constance Coram needs to go.

There’s a time to tell it like it is.

And when it comes to the county’s ongoing debacle with the Register of Deeds office, it is long past time.

So it was somewhat disturbing — but not at all surprising — that Wayne County Commissioner Bevan Foster turned once again to veiled insinuations of racism on the part of county staff and his fellow commissioners to excuse away the disaster that has been the hallmark of Register of Deeds Constance Coram’s lackluster performance in her job.

And since we have decided to really address this issue once and for all — and not to let up until it is resolved — no more careful choice of words.

Coram’s performance has been incompetent, scary and absolutely feckless.

This is the latest of many discussions involving Coram and the disarray at the Register of Deeds office that have been the subject of county commissioners’ meetings for months. We have shared many of them here.

It came during the auditor’s report at the board’s regular meeting Tuesday — the annual examination of the state of the county’s finances. The audit is required and reports like this happen every year not just in county government, but in many other public entities as well.

The county’s audit report for 2021, which was stellar and included what was described as a responsible management of finances and a significant positive fund balance, included a note of concern — the operation of the Register of Deeds office.

The items mentioned there include the red flags we have already discussed — bills that were not paid to and reports that were not filed with the state for six months, as well as a lack of a segregation of duties.

For those of you who don’t know, this is a critical part of proper accounting practices.

No one person is in charge solely of all aspects of county bill-paying, money-handling, etc. Think of it like a cross check to keep people honest. It is basic operating procedure. EVERYWHERE.

The auditor acknowledged that some of the issues that caused the segregation of duties problems were due to staffing shortages in the Register of Deeds office. More on that later.

But here is where we have another cause for concern.

The county’s audit required an extension this year. Some of the delays were caused by the introduction of new software. But the rest, as detailed by County Manager Craig Honeycutt in his explanation to auditors, was that the Finance Department has spent HUNDREDS of hours training Register of Deeds staff.

That’s right. We said “hundreds.”

Hours that you, the Wayne County taxpayers, are financing.

And if you have been paying attention, the county had to hire an employee to handle the invoices and other reports for the Register of Deeds office to make sure they are done on time.

Again … you bought it.

And then there are the problems with the Register of Deeds budget itself — and the spending that was out of control and led to Coram telling the commissioners that she needed more money added to her bottom line, months before the end of the county’s fiscal year.

There were also problems with invoices that were not getting paid in a timely manner. Rules were set up to make sure they were submitted properly — manually. Coram approves and signs off on the expenses and the county Finance Department makes sure the bills are paid.

If you think that sounds like a lot of work, you are right.

Finance Director Allison Speight explained during the meeting Tuesday that the office could have handled the challenges of the software change, but that having the additional burden of constantly “helping and training” Register of Deeds staff was too much to manage and to get the audit work done on time.

You might find it interesting that Honeycutt explained the action taken to correct the problems identified in the audit and not Coram.

It was not because she was not given the opportunity.

The auditor said she asked Coram to explain the problems and the steps that she has taken to correct the issues.

“It was unusable,” she said.

Now, you should know that the bills have been caught up — thanks to the Finance Department’s diligence. And the reports are in.

But it came at a price.

And you should be concerned about Foster’s continued attempts to explain away what is nothing but an officeholder who cannot handle a job.

His excuses?

The staff shortage.

Coram asked for help, he said. She told commissioners that she did not have enough people to get the job done.

His implication is, of course, that her concerns were ignored.

The real question is why Coram has a personnel problem in the first place.

There are multiple complaints about working for Coram — and the disarray in the office.

She doesn’t have employees because she does not know how to do the job.

There were other concerns, too. Coram’s hours were irregular — prompting commissioners to set times during which the office of the Register of Deeds was required to be open.

If you had to get a deed, a death certificate or a marriage license, you understand exactly what we mean.

It got so bad that Wayne County residents were heading to adjacent counties to get business done. There was so much, in fact, that Johnston County had to hire additional staff to accommodate the influx.

That lost business, by the way, cost you, the taxpayers, significant money.

Foster doesn’t seem to think all that money matters. Because apparently, in his view, the aforementioned burden on Wayne taxpayers is fake news.

If he didn’t feel that way, we suspect he would address the loss of revenue to neighboring counties and the hundreds of hours spent by other staff to get Coram’s job done instead of using veiled comments about Coram’s race to paint the county’s reaction to her incompetence as the system trying to keep a minority officeholder down.

His blind loyalty to Coram is misplaced — particularly given his track record during his stint on the Goldsboro City Council of scrutinizing money that was being spent on the taxpayers’ dime.

So here is the bottom line.

The county should not have had to train Coram to do anything. She ran on the credentials that she worked in a Register of Deeds office and that she knew how to run one.

We will save you the suspense. She doesn’t.

The reason she is there is our fault — all of us who sat back and thought we did not need to pay attention to who sits on our local boards or who runs our governments.

The fact that the county’s reports and payments to the state were not made on time and that the county Finance Department has had to train and to babysit the Register of Deeds is a travesty.

The employees of the Finance Department and their leader bailed Coram — and taxpayers — out of a serious situation.

Had the county manager and Speight not intervened, who knows what a mess there might have been.

And word is it is still not fixed. Commission Chairman Joe Daughtery pointed that out Tuesday, too.

And to have to sit there and listen to a county commissioner infer that the hundreds of hours you and your staff have spent bailing Coram out were, well, just a racist decision that a black woman cannot do the job? That is offensive.

And so, too, is continuously inferring that Coram is not being given a chance to defend herself or that she is being persecuted because she is black.

Balderdash.

Coram is a problem — a major problem.

And to all of the people who are sitting back and tiptoeing through the tulips while this mess continues to cost taxpayers time and money because they are afraid of being called racists, we have one thing to say.

Steel your spine and do something about it. Now.

Stop worrying about potential political fallout.

This is about what is right. This is about the county’s future.

To do anything other than find a way to get this woman out of office — or to minimize the damage she can cause — is an insult to every well-qualified and hard-working black leader in this community — and there are a lot of them. And the same is true for all the women who earned their leadership positions through hard work and talent — one of whom sits on the county commission.

And this is a lesson for us, too.

Elections matter and they have consequences.

We deserve better — and we should make sure that race baiters, self-serving attention-seekers and good old boys do not stop another conversation, another chance to work together to make this community better.

We can’t be hesitant to say what we think or to call out bad decisions. Not anymore.

We have issues to talk about, topics that are hard to address, but need to be discussed.

It is time to do something about it.

You are all talking about this mess — and many others — in private. We know because you share your thoughts with us.

Otherwise, we will be doomed to the incessant circles of rhetoric and going along to get along that poison communities.

Our parents taught us better.

And our children and grandchildren deserve better.