Doesn't the brain trust at the Porter County Council have a brain it can trust? Yet again, the council is turning to a consultant to help it sort through numbers and processes.

This time, the council is looking for a consultant to analyze the sheriff's department budget. The Porter County Jail is facing a funding dilemma because of the Indiana Department of Correction decision to pull its inmates from the jail.

Councilman Dan Whitten is proposing a consultant be hired to provide a cost-benefit analysis of various scenarios, including opening the final, vacant jail pod or turning away federal prisoners. The analysis would look for other ways the sheriff's department could make ends meet as well.

When the jail was built, the county relied on housing state and federal prisoners to help pay for the cost of operating the jail. Because of overcrowding, the state decided not to use the jail.

Councilman Jim Burge praised the idea of hiring a consultant to crunch the numbers. "They might even be able to make the money stretch further," he said.

This review might be admirable except that it's yet another example of a consultant being used -- at taxpayer expense -- because the elected officials seem unable or unwilling to do this hard work themselves.

In January, the council hired former Department of Local Government Finance Commissioner Beth Henkel to figure out why tax bills were so late in previous years and what must be done this year to make the process go more smoothly.

Henkel was asked to fix the mess in the auditor's assessor and treasurer's offices.

And these are just two high-profile examples of the government paying for an outside review of government operations and finances instead of handling the work in-house at much less expense.

Doesn't anyone at the county know what they're doing? And if so, why are so many consultants needed?

In essence, the taxpayers are paying twice for these analyses -- once for the elected officials or bureaucrats who are supposed to get this work done, and again for the consultants who do the actual work.

Here's some free advice: The county could save a bundle if the elected officials and staff were to accomplish more of this work in-house.