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Fiscal accountability takes a nose dive with proposed audit in Anderson County
The Cocklebur
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No more columns about Cindy Wilson or Joey Preston or Anderson County’s political war with itself over whether our government is a model of bureaucratic efficiency or a sinkhole for tax money and/or a coven of cronyism and kleptocracy.
That’s what I keep telling myself.
The economy, development, education, environment — all are real issues that have the added benefit of actually impacting the day-to-day lives of Upstate residents, rather than just serving as a rather vexing form of free public infotainment.
And then bam! Yet another shoe drops, and it just seems like someone has to say something, if only because it feels good to get it off your chest.
So, in case you were too busy working too hard to earn too little money to gas up your SUV and pay for the kids’ sack lunches, you may have missed the Anderson County’s most boneheaded decision ever. Really.
In what seemed like a fit of pique, the Anderson County Council (three of whom are lame ducks) voted to give a blank check to guys in pinstripes to conduct a “complete” audit. No questions asked. (Yes. Really.)
No fiscally conservative motions to debate the potential savings of fine-tooth combing a $125 million budget when you stand to pay $1 million-plus for the privilege.
No level-headed discussion about how far to go and about how anyone will know when it’s safe to end this peculiar fiscal colonoscopy. Set any limits, and you’re sure to find someone who’ll cry “Cover-up!”
Where’s the sanity?
Oh, I know that I wrote on more than one occasion that I supported a forensic audit if it would help break the death grip of endless speculation about waste and abuse choking our politics.
But I never thought for one moment that good, old-fashioned electoral politics might actually do the job instead.
To be sure, voting out three incumbents sends a pretty clear message about the need for accountability and fiscal discipline. But I don’t think it was a mandate for this kind of open-ended expedition.
More than likely (and if we’re lucky) the new council will bury the idea of a “complete" audit somewhere deep inside a subcommittee of a subcommittee.
Instead, they’ll do a real job of fiscal accountability by showing us how our money is spent now (not a year ago or a decade ago) and helping us understand the trade-offs that must happen if we are to put money back into our pockets instead of investing in the real needs for our future.
If that kind of fiscal common sense isn’t enough to challenge the prurient motives of our county’s very own Spanish inquisition, then let’s at least have a referendum on it before we spend the money.
That’s what I call a real mandate.
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call it what it is nick, another ploy to scare the public with stories of huge expenditures at a time everyone is gasping for "financial" air. that has been the tactic from the beginning! overwhelm us with useless paperwork and exaggerated expense, under the guise JRP is being cooperative and providing everything he is being asked for. this current decision is just a financial "get back" from the same majority that spent a million dollars to deny access to this very information. as lame ducks, they don't care about Anderson County. that has been clear for many years now. this move only highlights their disregard for a prudent measured approach to accountability and transparency. why do they keep pretending they don't know what areas we are interested in looking into? they do know, but their hope is enough people, with enough dirt to hide, or a public concerned about potentially huge unknown expenses to conduct this audit, will stop this audit from ever occurring.
personally, i see it as a bluff. trying to give the impression, "we are clean" and willing to spend as much of your tax money as we have to, to prove it! well of course you are, it isn't their money. now if they were required to spend their own money, as Cindy Wilson did, to prove their political point, i doubt seriously they would be suggesting this "no holds barred" approach.
it is a little different when you have your own skin in the game. quite frankly, if these lame ducks are so set on raping the public coffers to (pretend to) prove their point, i strongly believe Cindy Wilson should have a check cut to her for all the personal expenses she incurred in her dogged determination to bring this all to light.
as a matter of fact, this precise situation would probably be a good reason to enact a county ordinance immediately seating newly elected county council members who do not face opposition in the November elections. if you're out, you're out! giving them the opportunity to further exercise abuses of discretion, for which they were probably unseated to begin with, would be a travesty!
You want a complete audit...then you elect the folks you want who say they support a complete audit...then council votes for a complete audit...and now you say they are trying to hide something.
<sigh>
ok.
You know, the other day, I heard Joey Preston say, "The sky is blue." He must have been up to something saying that. I mean it looks blue, but its probly a diversionary tactic. Oh my God! You know, I bet he has the park police controlling the weather! Its all a part of his sinister plot to subvert, impurify and destroy our precious bodily fluids!
in response to TheWhig
very simply that the call for an end to end forensic audit of the entire county for the past 12 years (hang the cost)would be a waste of taxpayer money. the call for it, by a lame duck county council, is merely a ploy to scare the public with a big sticker price. they also know casting that wide a net would probably scare alot of people in the status quo as it would then put everyone's activity under the spotlight. this is their , "if WE go down, we ALL go down" call for this extensive and "hang the cost", "end to end" audit.
on another thread <cwilson4> asked some pointed questions about paving funds! the credit card accounts, Economic Development accounts, some discretionary accounts and a few others for the last three years will not be as costly an audit. hang the legal accounts. we'll never know why they spent that money, if they don't want to explain to their own constitutents why they spent the million and can hide behind legal maneuverings to do it, fine! i think these other accounts will be sufficiently illuminative.
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