Wednesday, July 13, 2011

CL Editorial lowers the boom on Hinds County.

Damn. Just damn. David Hampton takes a week off, comes back and BOOM goes the editorial page on Hinds County.

"State Auditor Stacy Pickering recently observed what Hinds countians already knew: The Board of Supervisors is sorely lacking in its ability to handle its finances.....

The supervisors approved a $30 million bond issue in 2007 that included that bit of extravagance before voters got enough of the free-spending ways and elected a new majority.

The new board got the bill. But that hasn't changed the ongoing level of wrongheadedness, however.

Examples are too numerous to give here, but a couple should suffice, such as the May brouhaha on purchasing emergency radios for Byram that ended up duplicating the purchases.

Or before that, promising raises without budgeting to pay for them (borrowing from reserves).

One could point to the $1.36 million for design work on a prison that was never built.

Or, this is a good one - the board voting in 2009 to call off an independent performance audit by the state auditor's office, which was designed to help the county do a better job of managing operations and the budget.

They said the audit designed to discover waste in government was - drumroll, please - a waste!

That was after the board had already spent $5,340 on the audit before it was finished.

Such hilarity! These misadventures could mean some big yucks if they weren't big bucks. Responsible spending should be the No. 1 campaign issue this election."










11 comments:

Burke said...

Yes! Endless thanks for first showing us that pit of vipers. Question now: Is there anyone running for supervisor for whom we should vote?

Anonymous said...

Except that they left out the siren deal, the board attorney conflict, the Motorola lawsuit....all the stuff we read your site for.

Kingfish said...

oh, and Derek still has not been paid. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Waste of ink. Hinds Co. voters have no clue about anything other than "What's in it for me?" Those guys can steal until the state dissolves it as a county, at which point the state will be accused of racism.

Anonymous said...

Only way to vote against these people is with you feet and move to another place to live. All is lost in Jackson and Hinds county and can never be turned around.

Anonymous said...

Supervisor Phil Fisher has been writing opinion pieces for local newspapers, and on the TV for years talking about the looming disaster of spending more than revenues and borrowing to pay salaries and the other normal cost of doing governmental business!!! That is like a family borrowing to go to the grocery store; can't do it forever!

KaptKangaroo said...

I wouldn't call it a boom. I would call it a minor infraction observation piece. There is, as was pointed out earlier, A LOT more to this story.

Anonymous said...

Where you going go 5:39?

Let's see our Tax Commissioner wants to float a 10 million dollar bond for a 10000 sq ft monstrosity on the R&D Center property at the corner of Ridgewood and Lakeland and wants to add a 500 car garage . I guess we'll have another bond to widen Lakeland Drive again to accommodate the extra traffic. Then we had Magnolia Venture and the beef plant. But, don't forget the slew of folks we sent to DC who were poor but came back millionaires on $165000 a year even though they had to maintain two residences. How'd they DO that?

Less see, I can promise not to raise taxes by floating bonds or making sure your local folks have to do it instead by cutting off their spending money. Or , let the masses ride over pot holes so I can have a fancy new building somewhere and maybe even name it after myself .Just emulate the late Jesse Helms and his " leadership" building in the middle of nowhere . Just increase debt that way and let someone else take the blame and figure out how to pay for,oh,highway repair and you get to look like you don't waste taxpayer dollars.

Let's believe those who say their for responsible federal spending when neither party can claim fiscal responsibility factually . Really , all you have to know is that the REA isn't on the chopping block and never has been. The Rural Electric Associationbureaucracy is SO needed, right? Do you KNOW of a rural area with no electricity in our Nation? I guess our politicians' friends and lovers and family have to work somewhere , after all. I mean we have to give federal contracts out so our wives and mothers can have added income . That's how to create jobs!

SO..where do you want to go?

Not to worry, we'll let Rupert tell us how to fix it.

Well, I guess we'll have to just keep relying on Rupert Murdoch's unethical, sensational journalism for the answers. Getting people to squabble and hate each other and live in fear rather than look at facts and work together solve problems and get rid of some of the greedy bastards we elect is how he made his money so we should trust him, right? He doesn't really rely on scandals to make money, huh? And, after all, he's a patriotic American who cares about our Nation...oh no, wait, he's a Jewish Australian that then became an American because there's a law that only American citizens can own television stations. We rely on information from a guy considered unethical in his prior countries of operation who now owns not just Fox but the Wall Street Journal among other media operations. But, that's OK, " he who controls information controls power" and this is a guy we can trust , right? A guy who'd be perfectly happy for us to be a colony again.

Let Rupert direct our thinking since neither of our political parties can be counted upon not to certify either inept or self-serving candidates and their membership fantasizes that being a party member guarantees honesty and integrity. We should never , ever hold our own accountable when we can blames someone else, right?

Oh well, when the average IQ in this Nation has dropped from 100 to 90 in just 3 decades, when we've played politics with education so that we've gutted a system that use to work,when how we " feel" about something is considered as important as knowing the facts, this is what you get...the newcomers to politics doing what has always been done, only their inexperience makes them less efficient at rewarding their cronies.

Anonymous said...

10:02 - stereotype much? trying to bring back the gas chambers?

Anonymous said...

Oh Dear, DonnerK is on JJ now.

Anonymous said...

10:50 read Rupert's bio and his autobiography. He made his money that wasn't inheritied through sensational journalism. Makes Hearst look honorable. You missing the his British scandal?
The IQ decline is just a statistical fact.



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