Canton opposes voluminous sunshine

Outrageous. A group in Canton wants to know how taxpayers' dollars are spent. This includes - gasp - how much public employees are paid! Can you imagine that a government be accountable to taxpayers? I mean really, that is "ridiculous and stupid."

Two residents are questioning Canton's public records policy after receiving a combined $600 bill for requested copies of the city budget and bank statements.

Susan Coulange and James Cockrell, top officers in a grass-roots Canton government watchdog group, allege the charges do not reflect actual costs and likely were meant to dissuade their inquiry.

Mayor William Truly vehemently defends the fees and characterizes the request for bank statements - because they contain employee salary information - as "mean" and "ridiculous and stupid."

"I could understand how a group would want to know what elected officials are doing, but why would you want to know what ordinary employees are paid? That's mean," Truly said. "It is the most ridiculous and stupid request of which I am aware."

Cockrell said the purpose of the records requests made on June 8 is to track how taxpayer money is spent.

Truly acknowledged the city often waives fees for small-scale records requests, but the mayor said it was necessary to charge for nearly 650 copies and more than nine hours of labor needed to research and copy the city's budget and bank statements from January to June.

If only someone would invent something that could put all 650 copies on one computer file that would cost nothing. Imagine that.

"When you have such a voluminous request that takes them (city employees) away from their customary duty to prepare this voluminous amount of material, it disrupts their work day," Truly said.

Truly described the records probe as an "attack" and a way to "target" his administration and employees.

Bill Luckett's Hilton Penthouse

We suppose they chose the Penthouse to keep the mule headed farmers out.

If Barbour had listened to Democrats, we wouldn't have today's announcement from Toyota

What a great announcement from Toyota for Mississippi today. If Mississippi Democrats had their way, our state would have acted in such a way that might have prevented this day from coming.

Mississippi Democratic Party Executive Director Sam Hall, just under two months ago, criticized Mississippi's policies toward Toyota and suggested Toyota was years away from coming to Mississippi, "if ever".

Even in the case of Toyota, who has failed to hold up their end of the bargain and who look like they are years away from coming to the state, if ever. Nonetheless, we continue to pay on their debt services. - Sam Hall: April 23, 2010

These comments echoed the criticisms of Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Jamie Franks earlier this year.

In the meantime, the State of Mississippi is hurting, and we are continuing to pay the debt services on a deal Gov. Barbour struck with Toyota despite the automakers’ failure to fulfill their obligations. Recalls for Camry’s have dominated the news. Now comes another round of recalls, which is a harbinger of more fiscal woes for the company. These recalls affect the Prius, the model expected to be built in Mississippi. The longer Toyota struggles financially, the longer it will be before they open the Mississippi plant. And the longer Mississippians will continue to throw their tax dollars at an empty site in North Mississippi. Gov. Barbour needs to go back to Toyota and tell them that they should pay their own debt services until the time they can open the Mississippi plant. - Jamie Franks: February 8, 2010

Franks had said the same a couple of months before that.

Today, we’re spending tens of millions of tax dollars on debt services for Toyota, and we have not one job to show for it. None of this is smart fiscal policy, and it obviously isn’t effective job creation policy either. - Jamie Franks: December, 11, 2009

Today is a day to celebrate. First that more jobs are coming to Mississippi. And second that Republican Haley Barbour is in charge, and not Democrats who would have cut and run and cost us the deal they could not have even attracted to begin with. Jamie...it IS effective job creation policy.

More space in Democrat's tiny tent as switchers head to MSGOP

At least those Democrats still inside the tiny tent have more space to move around now.

Three more elected Democrats have joined the GOP: #11, #12, #13 – Three more Mississippi Dems switch to GOP (hattip Right of Mississippi)

One of the switchers, Supervisor Randy Dyess, told the Marion County Informer:

“I don’t feel like I left the party; I feel like it left me,” referring to recent national issues he disagrees with including health care and cap-and-trade. “I just can’t support some of the national policies,” Dyess said.

He said his decision to switch parties is not solely based on President Obama but more so on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the “party as whole.”

He noted that taxpayers are going to have to foot the bill for the programs advocated by the Democrats. “I don’t like the direction the country is going in,” said Dyess. “Somebody’s got to pay for these projects.”

Tar Balls in Starkville?

We appreciate your poetics President Obama, but unless there are tar balls washing up in Starkville and Ackerman, we would not call Ray Mabus a "son of the Gulf Coast."

List of $200+ hotels used by MDOT officials

The Sun Herald has a list of hotels and resorts costing more than $200 a night used by MDOT officials.

Democrats - Party of the Little Tent

The Mississippi Democratic Party sent out an email today (HT Majority in Mississippi) announcing they are coordinating their campaign efforts with "Organizing for America" (formerly "Obama for America") to help out Travis Childers, Gene Taylor, and Bennie Thompson.

The email arrogantly portrays elections as theft ("The Republican Party desires to steal our three Democratic seats"). We guess their incumbents feel entitled to those seats, as if they own them, and the very idea that the voters of Mississippi might think otherwise outrages them. Can you believe the voters want to "steal" the seats of their representatives? Apparently the voters have been led to believe those elected officials represent them, when the Democrats know these incumbents run the show and the voters should just fall in line.

But, hilariously, the email also describes the Democrats as "the party of the Big Tent". Right. Unless you are a conservative, in which case you don't really belong in their party and in fact, you're a "liar". Or, unless you are a white in Noxubee County, in which case you should be blocked from even voting. Or, unless you don't fall in lock step with the orders of the "leadership". Or, unless the Democrats question your "loyalty."

Feds teach Bill Minor colors during MDOTourism travel

So what have we learned about MDOTourism this year? Read this story from the Sun Herald and you'll see that Bill Minor learns his colors at conference, Butch Brown thinks open government is bullshit, and Wayne Brown is planning a tax payer funded trip to Cuba.

Even as many other government agencies and businesses are cutting back on travel in the weak economy, records show Mississippi’s top four transportation officials are spending more to go to conferences and other shindigs.

Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Larry L. “Butch” Brown, Southern District Transportation Commissioner Wayne Brown (no relation), Central Commissioner Dick Hall and Northern Commissioner Bill Minor spent a combined $56,045 on travel in 2009.

The Sun Herald recently searched travel records for Sept. 30, 2008, through March 12, 2010. The documents show trips to places including Boston; Vail, Colo.; New Orleans; Destin, Fla.; Hot Springs, Ark.; Pigeon Forge, Tenn.; and many Washington, D.C., trips. The records also show receipts from expensive hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt Regency and the Washington Court Hotel. They stayed a combined 52 nights in hotel rooms costing more than $200 a night in the last 18 months.

Wayne Brown, who laments the lack of cheap rooms in the Beltway, booked the most expensive stay, according to the 2009 records. He paid $385 for one night at the Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Va., for a conference. He said some events have to be held at hotels that can accommodate large conventions.

If only there was hotel near the Ritz-Carlton that was cheaper. Maybe like the Doubletree, the Crowne Plaza, the Holiday Inn, the Best Western, or the Days Inn. All of which are less than two miles away from the Ritz-Carlton (some just a few blocks) and all of which can be booked for under a hundred dollars a night (according to hotels.com).

“The taxpayers are spending almost $1 billion a year on roads in Mississippi and they need people leading that charge that are knowledgeable and involved,” Wayne Brown said.

By that logic, there is no need to elect an incumbent. The whole reason to reelect someone is because they have experience. But what Wayne Brown is saying is whether you've been there for years or just got there, you still have to go to these conferences. Apparently, incumbents like Brown don't retain much information as they have to go every year.

According to Bill Minor, these conferences teach the commissioners their colors, which might qualify any kindergartner to be a commissioner.

“We know reds mean stop, green means go,” Minor said. “We are talking about … ‘Go Orange’ to make people slow down. Orange means slow down in these places where we are working on the roads because there could be a big bulldozer pull out in front of you, or somebody could walk out in front of you and be killed. These are things we’ve learned when we go because the feds are there teaching us.”

And if it is anything the feds are good at, its teaching.

According to the state Department of Finance and Administration, of the combined $56,045 the four spent on travel in 2009, MDOT Director Butch Brown spent $20,921. Wayne Brown spent $19,225. Minor spent $12,552 and Hall, who lives closest to Jackson, where Transportation Commission meetings are held twice a month, spent considerably less than the others, at $3,347.

MDOT’s annual budget includes $3 million for travel.

Butch Brown said he believes, given MDOT’s size and responsibilities, the expenses are reasonable. He’s been critical of the Sun Herald for reporting his agency’s travel spending.

“We still have to wade through the murky bullshit of the Biloxi Sun Herald doing articles just like this, while we’re out there busting our ass to make something good happen for you,” Brown said.

“I am never told who went,” Hall said. “I never see those expenses. That is all made by the executive director. Yes, I think too many people go to some meetings, but that’s about all I can say about it. I don’t control it.”

So I guess when Wayne Brown wants to take his next foreign trip, all he has to do is get it cleared with Butch Brown.

“I think we need to do considerably more overseas travel,” Wayne Brown said. He said he’d like to visit Cuba because that country would be advantageous as a hub for massive container ships, which could be downloaded and their cargo placed on smaller ships bound for Mobile, New Orleans, Gulfport and other Gulf Coast cities. He said work could be finished faster in Cuba because of less-stringent environmental regulations. “I think Cuba holds a great key to our ports,” Wayne Brown said. “With this Panama Canal widening and those ships coming in there, you have to download those somewhere. The most favorable place to download them is Cuba, for Mississippi, because if they go on out further, then they will transship them to Savannah and places like that.”

MDOTourism: Tax Payers Picking Up The Tab

Good news and bad news from the Sun Herald on MDOTourism.

The good news:

Top highway officials said they stopped letting the road-building industry pay for their trips to meetings at luxury hotels in tourist hot spots — a change lawmakers and the state’s top ethics official applaud.

The bad news:

Taxpayers now pick up the tab

Not everyone can afford a Florida vacation this summer. But don't worry, some of your tax dollars are going to pay for MDOT officials to have their own Florida vacations.

A set of travel records the Sun Herald recently requested, from September 2008 until March, showed trips to Destin, Fla., for separate conferences — one by the MRBA and one by the American Council of Engineering Companies. Taxpayers covered the tab, which included rooms at top-drawer resort hotels.

At one ACEC meeting in February 2009, Wayne Brown was reimbursed $385 for one night’s stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City outside Washington. He also attended the Mississippi Asphalt Pavement Association meetings in Fairhope, Ala., in March 2009. Expense reports showed he paid $252.56 a night for the four nights he stayed there, with an overall tab of $1,165.

Wayne Brown, Minor and Hall attended meetings of the MRBA in Destin, Fla., paying $247 a night at the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort. Wayne Brown stayed three nights, paying $866.41, Hall stayed three nights, paying $909, Minor stayed two nights, paying $745, for all expenses. Wayne Brown found himself at the same Sandestin hotel a couple of months later, when he spent four nights for an ACEC conference. Each night was $247, for a trip totaling $1,145.

Wayne Brown also attended an Alabama Society of Professional Land Surveyors meeting in Montgomery, Ala., in February 2009, which cost taxpayers $707.76.

So what then is the alternative? Obviously, don't travel so much. In case they couldn't see it from their Jackson tower, there is a recession on and Mississippi families have to cut their vacation plans. Use the money on a road, not a road trip.

Bennie Thompson would hide ethics complaints from public

The Ethics Committee ordered Bennie Thompson to repay the cost of his Caribbean trips that were found to violate House Ethics Rules, but said they could not prove he knew corporate funding was behind it so they didn't punish him otherwise.

But we still don't know if there will be any decision on the other items pending against Thompson.

1) Allegation he used a House Homeland Security Committee hearing to shake down lobbyists for campaign contributions
2) Whether as Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, Thompson used the organization as a pass through to hide corporate sponsorships of congressional junket in Tunica
3) Is there anything wrong with corporate lobbyists paying a member of Thompson's staff money to throw a party that honors Thompson at which the lobbyist/sponsors will attend and get access to Thompson?

And if Bennie Thompson had his way, we might never know. Last week Peter Flaherty from the National Legal and Policy Center spoke on "On Deadline with Sid Salter" about the efforts of several accused or investigated congressmen to shut down some of the new ethics procedures to keep allegations and investigations from the public arena. Brian Perry wrote in the Madison County Journal that one of these congressmen was actually goodtime Bennie Thompson.

The national press is talking about this story as well, including the Washington Post.

The newly created Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent watchdog set up to review and, if warranted, forward ethics complaints to the official House ethics committee for further action, has taken its mission seriously. Too seriously, it seems, for the comfort of some lawmakers. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), joined by 19 other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, last week introduced a resolution that would essentially neuter the ethics board, making it more difficult for OCE to launch investigations and inform the public of its findings.

Ms. Fudge said in a statement that she acted to make the process fairer; OCE, she said, "is currently the accuser, judge and jury." It's not too hard to imagine other motivations for Ms. Fudge's concerns. Her chief of staff, Dawn Kelly Mobley, was admonished by the ethics committee for her role in helping a group of Black Caucus members improperly obtain an all-expenses-paid trip to the Caribbean -- this when Ms. Mobley was the ethics lawyer for Ms. Fudge's predecessor, the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, and Ms. Tubbs Jones was chairing the ethics committee. Four of the lawmakers who went on the Caribbean trip signed on to Ms. Fudge's resolution: Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.) and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.).

Undercutting OCE's authority would be backsliding. This change would have prevented release of OCE's findings in the Caribbean trip. That Ms. Fudge and friends fear their power to launch an investigation says less about the new ethics office than it does about the sponsors of this misguided resolution.

MDOT's Butch Brown to Sun Herald: stop "kicking our ass"

"I think you ought to back off of MDOT and start saying thank you instead of kicking our ass." MDOT Executive Director Butch Brown to the Sun Herald.

Butch Brown apparently thinks the press should only do public relations and not hold government accountable.

Well, we'll thank-you. Thank-you Mr. Brown for taking our tax payer dollars and buildling new offices. Thank-you Mr. Brown for using my tax money on trips around the world. Thank-you Mr. Brown for planning to rip-up Church Street in Port Gibson because you don't want to do a bypass. Thank-you so much, Mr. Brown, for running MDOT for us because really, we could never find anyone else to do it for us.

The Sun Herald shares MDOT's attempt to counter the sunshine the press puts on how MDOT spends our money.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation recently charged the Sun Herald nearly $1 a page for travel-expense reports for four state highway officials, compared with 25 cents a page for the same kind of records in 2008.

The newspaper was billed a total of $511 for the records, which included a 25 cent per page charge to copy the 538 pages. The total, officials said, also included paying a software consultant $250 to "develop a program" for identifying the records.

Really? To develop a program to identify the records? So until the Sun Herald asked for it, MDOT had no idea how much they were spending on travel! They couldn't because they didn't have a system to answer that question. That sounds like bad management to us.

There was also a $90 charge for a clerk to pull and copy the documents, and $36 for an auditor to review the records. MDOT said the auditor worked for an hour looking for missing receipts and documentation.

Hold on. They charged for an auditor to find "missing receipts and documentation." So MDOT has a practice of paying for travel without receipts or documentation. That appears to be the process because otherwise, they wouldn't have to look for them. And apparently, MDOT's auditors don't get receipts or documentation as part of their normal job activities or else they wouldn't need to charge the Sun Herald for doing it. So tack on bad auditing to bad management, or it could be just part of it.

The Sun Herald made a request for travel records in late 2008, in which MDOT was asked for travel-expense reports for about four years' worth of travel records for the same four officials.

MDOT turned over the four years' worth of documents for the officials, but charged only 25 cents a page for nearly 1,700 pages of records. There was no additional charge for computer software, clerks and auditors in the records released in 2008.

So that means in the past two years, MDOT has actually gotten LESS effective. It costs four times as much to make a copy, not to mention paying someone to write software as well as clerks and auditors to do what it seems like they should be doing already.

Director Butch Brown said he doesn't believe the Sun Herald should be looking into the travel costs for him and the commission

I wonder why?

Obama's Change: Teens Face Worst Summer Job Market in 41 Years

Once again, young people voted for change with Obama, we've certainly gotten it. From CNBC:

Employment among 16-to 19-year olds in May grew by just 6,000, the smallest increase since 1969, when teen jobs fell by 14,000, according to government data analyzed by employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In May 2008 and 2009, teen employment grew by over 110,000.

Tate County Newspaper: Nancy on the Ballot

The Tate County Democrat keeps it very succinct.

In the coming months we will hear Democrats wail that "Pelosi is not on Mississippi's November ballot."This is not correct. Speaker of the Nancy Pelosi is definitely on the November Congressional ballot. A vote for Travis Childers, Bennie Thompson, or Gene Taylor is a vote to perpetuate Democratic control of the lower chamber and a vote to continue the Pelosi - Reid regime that is causing so much damage to our country.