The Eastside Journal this morning had an editorial page item listing where gpv't could and should save money with NO adverse effects on services. One of them was a splendid example of "If we have it, we will sure as heck spend it". It seems that each councilmember (of King County), has a special account of $100,000 that can be spent for any reason (read "vote-buying") without any pier review. The news item said this was to allow them to support whatever pet projects they felt warranted funding. The total of these special funds came to 1.3 million. I wonder how many other things like this are out there in Bureaucratic Wonderland.

You know, this is primarily our fault. The voters of this state, and in particular King County, have thrown money at the bureaucracy virtually without limit. I've lived in K.C. since 1965, and I'll bet that the number of tax increases that have been voted down here can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It's no wonder that government thought the tax funds they had to play with were bottomless.

-- Albert Fosha (AFosha@aol.com), December 10, 1999

Answers

Peer review, not pier review!!! Oh well, they say General Grant couldn't spell, either.

-- Albert Fosha (AFosha@aol.com), December 10, 1999.

Hey, could ya put the link to the story in here? I'd like to read this and add it to my '1001 wasteful things in the King County Council, other than their salaries' scrapbook.

-- Paul Oss (jnaut@earthlink.net), December 10, 1999.

The link to the article is: http://www.eastsidejournal.com/Opiniondocs/edits/bsm01410.html

I had extracted the item, about the slush funds, from the newspaper article this morning. However, just after posting it, I found the above link given in the first answer to the thread "Have you read the following opinion 1999-12-09" , provided by Mr Craig Carson. I spoke of this one item because I thought that it was, even though relatively small, the most infuriating of all the items listed in the article.

Do you get the idea that the councilmembers probably all feel that the dollars involved are so small that they are merely "chump change". I'll bet they don't have any idea why people might be disturbed about something like this. This can probably be considered as just another example of the massive disconnectin this state between the government and the governed.

-- Albert Fosha (AFosha@aol.com), December 10, 1999.