Jackson Jambalaya

Don't know about state law regarding government accounting, but under GAAP, holding over an invoice into another year is a no-no.

I jumped right to the end and read Johnson's response letter. In a nutshell, since the OSA didn't conduct a criminal investigation/audit and they have no authority to impose any recommendations on the County, the MCBoS will do as they please, per usual. They basically told Pickering where he could stick his assessment. They have no intentions of doing one thing differently.

Vote them all out.

Where can we find a copy of the report to download or view in full page format? It's hard to read here. Thanks...BB

Click on download or full screen.

So, Pickering writes that he doesn't want "to be drawn into the many conflicts" in Madison County politics. So, he doesn't choose to go the extra mile to open a more extensive investigation into other connections. Connections that suggest a "criminal enterprise" between Rudy, Tim and others to defraud the taxpayers. Tim says we relied on Mark Houston, who not so coincidentally, resigned not long ago to go into private practice. Seems like everyone here is trying their best not to find fault or be responsible.

This is evidence that neither Johnson nor Pickering deserve the job they have.

Its all about the interchange.

Having read the report the question, why is the question not being asked "who reviewed the contact?"

This just proves what I had already decided about Pickering over the accusations of misuse of his MS issued car. Pickering is incompitant, lacks a pair of testiculars to do the job, and sure in the hell Pickering's character is far from beyond reproach. To waste money, time, and man power doing a "not official/unofficial" investigation of something this big, that smells and looks as bad this does....

PACK YOUR CRAP AND GET READY TO TAKE YOUR ASS BACK TO LAUREL PICKERING... YOUR FINISHED.karilly

What are the Madison Taxpayers going to say now? They have elected a stacked deck and are not getting to benefit from it and remember they have not done anything wrong, what a joke!

If Mother Mary and Pickering had a child together what would the child be like?

A Cry for Vengeance
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise;
2 for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me:

they have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred;

and fought against me without a cause.
4 For my love they are my adversaries:

but I give myself unto prayer.
5 And they have rewarded me evil for good,

and hatred for my love.
6 Set thou a wicked man over him:

and let Satan stand at his right hand.
7 When he shall be judged, let him be condemned:

and let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few;

and let another take his office. Acts 1.20
9 Let his children be fatherless,

and his wife a widow.
10 Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg:

let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath;

and let the strangers spoil his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him:

neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off;

and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD;

and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be before the LORD continually,

that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.
16 Because that he remembered not to show mercy,

but persecuted the poor and needy man,
that he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing,

so let it come unto him:
as he delighted not in blessing,
so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment,

so let it come into his bowels like water,
and like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him,

and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20 Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD,

and of them that speak evil against my soul.
21 But do thou for me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name's sake:

because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
22 For I am poor and needy,

and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth:

I am tossed up and down as the locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting;

and my flesh faileth of fatness.
25 I became also a reproach unto them:

when they looked upon me they shook their heads. Mt. 27.39 · Mk. 15.29
26 Help me, O LORD my God:

O save me according to thy mercy:
27 that they may know that this is thy hand;

that thou, LORD, hast done it.
28 Let them curse, but bless thou:

when they arise, let them be ashamed;
but let thy servant rejoice.
29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame;

and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth;

yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor,

to save him from those that condemn his soul.


Her is to you you STACY AND MARY......

This isn't about a lack of oversight or bad management. It is about deliberate misuse of public funds for personal wealth. I'm sure Tim and Rudy have been careful to hide their criminal acts. The ones that were supposed to provide checks and balances had their hand in the pie too. When Tim gets enraged just over the suggestion of auditing the engineering fees, something is very wrong. Are Tim and Rudy lifelong friends? Is Rudy just an awesome guy? Why not accept what it really is?
1) Pay Rudy for work he doesn't do.
2) Rudy distributes a portion of his "earnings" to those who keep him employed.
3) Finally, Rudy files a lawsuit against anyone that tries to expose him.

How long can this go on? I don't think they're even worried about getting caught. It's maddening!

Why blame Mary.... Stupid... That is why and how this board of supergiants have got away with so much due to it is always someone elses fault. If people would see Mary is not the problem with the board they did this all on their own. True to one thing, they did cross her and alot of taxpayers I guess they think Mary is the only one against them... What a joke, but let them keep thinking they won and wonder how much more Ed is going to take? Never knew him to be so quiet and so wrong... What next will be interesting especially when the only persons that have done was Mary and Pickering. My question is Re he Madison taxpayers going to move out of the county to cut out all the fluff or are they going to do something about it and send this board a packing, wonder what county they will go to next? They would blend in so well in Hinds !!!!!

My oh my the sheeets gettin' stirred. Great job KF.

It is all a Two Lakes Conspiracy....

Did Brunini review these contracts in 04? Has anyone read what I read? Who reviewed or drafted these contracts?

Here is what happened.

Rudy would show up to the board with his pay me card. Sometimes he had a contract, sometimes he didn't. He didn't document or itemize much, he just said "Pay me" and so the Tim, Karl and Paul did. Paid him millions. Stacy comes along and catches them with their hands in the cookie jar and says so in the draft and final report.

Problem is, Section 7-7-69 of the code says he has to give them 30 days to offer corrections, so that is what the gang of five did: sign their contracts and meet the bare minimum required. Then Tim Johnson says to Stacy Pickering: Thanks now get lost and shut up.


The problem is the law doesn't do much about a board determined to overpay an engineer. This is akin to the New Orleans school system before Katrina when they couldn't even audit the system and said they would have to start from scratch while hundreds or more teachers got double paychecks for years.

read the report, Mr. Steele is wrong and is simply the Gang of Five's mouthpiece.

I also got a tip today that when I published my post about the audit a few weeks ago, some calls were made raising hell about what I wrote. Funny how none of them contacted me to correct me.

I love how the lobbyist for Madison County says there is no proof of misuse of public funds. Rudy and Tim, while they thumb their noses at the thought of getting caught, aren't going to leave a trail of bread crumbs saying "I'm stealing your money". The best we can hope for is for to vote Johnson out and replace him with someone honest who will fire Rudy.

They might get rid of Rudy if Griffin, Banks AND Johson get replaced. It will take more than just Johnson getting voted out. If yall remember Johnson said publicly on television and paper a while back that he wasn't going to run again because of threats to his family. He said it when the Reunion interchange didnt pass getting built......wonder who the threats came from.

To 8:50 PM-- Where do you think we got Elvis in the first place? First for senator then for supe. She was fine with him until he crossed her.

Madison County needs a THOROUGH cleansing. Every elected official in this county and its cities, too, needs to be removed. Even if the voters should suddenly awaken and realize they've been bamboozled, which is very unlikely, it will take years to remove the stench.

It is past time to vote the bastards out.

Not surprisingly, the CL article is lame. But here's what I don't understand...why doesn't Stacey do an investigative audit? Or would it make a difference? Why not try to get his hands on the sub contracts via the other parties that signed them, since Rudy won't hand them over?

It's not just Tim, Banks and Griffin are a huge part of the problem. Both have built their kingdoms in the northern part of the county and between the three of them, they do whatever they want. Rudy is also on the payroll for the city of Canton, but there's so much corruption up there that he looks like a choirboy compared to the rest.

It'll be real interesting to see the financial report due out in a few weeks. Will Pickering pull out the stops and show us the magnitude of this thing, or will he be just killing trees with another report that leaves a lot of blanks to fill in?

I still say if Mother Mary wants change and someone's stone on her spear she should run for Johnsons spot of the BOS. Its rumored that she has an interest in the state auditors office but wont run if Pickering is not going to run for LT. Gov.

If she wants change she needs to step up to the plate and do something about it. She needs to run for and win the office that can bring change about !

Then you have D. I. Smith.....he was NOT elected. He was hand picked by and shoved down the throat of south Madison county by Andy Taggart. I'm not saying Mr. Smith is a bad supervisor I'm just saying he was not duly elected. Even though he and Mother Mary dont see eye to eye on most things he's atleast trying to do the right thing by this audit.

Why doesn't Pickering subpoena the subcontracts? And can't the District D.A. step in and do it?

Our biggest problem is the corruptibility of the office of county supervisor. So much money flows through with so little control that it's amazing that we've kept up with it as well as we have. I don't know how many remember a few years and a couple of elections back, but Tim was brought forth to the voters of Madison County as a reform candidate to root out the existing corruption. We can clean it up again and keep corruption at bay if honest people will run for office and can be elected. However, that's our only option - once elected they're hard to control, and it's easy for a good guy to become a bad guy over the course of four years. Bill Billingsley

Well don't vote for Gerald Steen in the upcoming election, word is he accepted a $100,000.00 campaign contribution from Rudy Warnock. That seems quite huge for a County Supervisor race.

Invest $100000 for millions in contracts? A pretty good deal. D.I. Smith's "election" may have made some folks mad, but he is a great guy and sincere in his efforts to look after the county.

I agree that D.I. is a supervisor who needs to stay in place. He tries to keep the rest of them honest - a difficult job at times -and although Gerald Steen might be a good supervisor as well, he can't be any more of an opponent of corruption than D.I. is. Bill Billingsley

Only skimmed the Pickering report, was more interested in the Johnson/BOS response.

Would characterize it as from the
"Don't blame him, don't blame me, blame that guy behind the tree (the attorney?)" school of elected official defense. Quite telling in its eagerness to implicate other employees, who oddly enough reported to and were supervised by (I use that word with some reluctance and much irony) the very same implicators.

Let me see if I understand this, I'm just a simple Yankee.
Folks elect a hypothetical supervisor, let's call him Supe TJ, along with the other supervisors. They, as part of their responsibilities and acting in the public interest (one hopes) hire and/or engage an engineer/firm, an attorney/firm and a comptroller. And their defense is that if any of those aforementioned hired parties screw up, waste the taxpayer's money or engage in questionable or perhaps corrupt practices, it's not the Board of Supervisor's fault! My head is spinning, that's like an
X-games skateboard move!

Or to put it another way:
Listen, Mr. Fancy State Auditor, there just weren't any problems with the payments to the engineer, at least any big problems, but if there were then it was because of what the law firm/attorney did or told us to do.(and we are not admitting there were any problems)
And there wasn't a problem with the documentation, but if there was then why didn't the former state auditing agency employee tell us there was and fix it for us? Why are you blaming us?

These folks seemed to have taken the "count" out of accountability, or should I say they have taken the "ability" out of accountability. Or both. Which leaves us with A C. Guess it could stand for All Clear. Or some other words come to mind. You could be creative.

I'm not up on who all is responsible for all this on the present board, though obviously the ones who were in office during the period investigated by the State Auditor's office would be a starting point. I would agree with the posts regarding D. I. Smith, who seems like an honest public servant. When do the rest of the folks responsible run again? And what's the chance that the second report really hits hard? Are we talking cold day in hell territory?

Tell you what, this all makes me proud to be a Jacksonian.

Just read the whole thing thoroughly. Ridiculous. Will take a while to read it but its worth printing out and reading. Pay attention to the responses at the end of the report by Madison County.

Thanks KF... help me understand. Warnock, and conceivably even Hamer, submit invoices to the County Comptroller for payment on the claims docket, and not a living breathing sole reviews these requests which are submitted with no supporting documentation? And, some of these bills are for $200K, $300K and more?

There has to be a pony in here some where! Wake up Pickering and get a backbone! The rest of the world smells it!

All ole Pickering had to do was look at the subcontracts and he would have found fraud against the taxpayers - but he didn't want to
"be drawn into the many conflicts present there".

D.I. Smith and Mayor Mary were right. Madison County is a mess and Pickering's report proves it. The State Auditor is just to afraid to dig a little more and find the truth.