No matter what, taxpayers get the bill

We at Screams from da Porch sometimes like to provide all two readers with some insight on a story. The most recent one ran Saturday, called “Trustee’s Office mistake to cost taxpayers $12,500.”

You can read that bad boy by clicking right smack here.

Now, this post isn’t really about the “reporting error” (or whatever they’re calling the screw-up over at the Trustee’s Office); it’s just a little inside baseball about what happened during an interview.

OK, so I’m talking to county Mayor Tim Burchett about an email from the county’s auditor, KPMG, and how officials want to bill the county some additional coin for what they say was extra work on their part to complete the audit. (The audit was completed on time by the way.)

The mayor tells me that he’s going to ask the Trustee’s Office to pay for it. He was very, very adamant about this. When I asked if it really mattered who paid (the Trustee’s Office turns over additional money it collects to the county, so technically it’s all county money), Burchett said that yes, it would be “symbolic.”

Anyhoo, I write that down and later I’m talking to Emperor Dean Rice and he’s going on about something that I can’t recall and at some point I tell him that the mayor wants the Trustee’s Office to pick up the tab.

Rice is kind of surprised. I think. That’s how I took it anyway. About 20 or 30 minutes or so later, the mayor calls, letting me know that he misspoke about wanting the Trustee’s Office to pay the bill. I asked if he had talked to Dean about this. He had. I asked Dean later if he had talked to the mayor about this. He did.

Strange.

Like I said: It doesn’t matter which office pays for it. Cause it’s really your coin.

But, I don’t expect this to be the last time the tab is mentioned.

The Audit Committee meets in late January. It’s going to be brought up again.