Waste, fraud and abuse

Check out this e-mail we got from a reader. We checked the author's credibility and found it to be rock-solid. This is a good look into the attitudes that permeate state government.

"I work in a state office outside Frankfort. In the past week or so I've noticed a lot of delivery trucks at our office and they have been unloaded boxes by the dozens. Not a day goes by that we don't have a couple of deliveries.

"The other day I noticed a lady who works there taking a few empty boxes with her. This lady is a longtime employee who definitely predates the Fletcher administration and was hired by the Democrats. I asked her if she was moving and she said no, that they were just boxing a few things up. I made the comment that I had seen a lot of deliveries lately and there should be a lot of empty boxes available, and she said yes, that they were trying to spend all the money in the budget before the end of the fiscal year. She said that any unspent money gets turned back in and the budget for next year would get cut.

"This strikes me as an excellent example of waste and abuse. Maybe not fraud, but definitely the other two. Spending more money that you need to just to keep the budget from being reduced next year? Come to find out this is a longstanding practice in state government and the Democrats who are embedded in the bureaucracy are continuing that practice despite the efforts of the administration to cut back on wasteful spending.

"We have enough pens and paper clips to last us for three years, and the sad part is, next June they'll do it all over again.

"This goes hand-in-hand with something that happened to me last summer when I had to go to Frankfort for something. One of the merit employees, who predated the Fletcher administration, was griping about spending and budget restrictions. His words were, 'Our boss is a Republican and he wants us to account for where every penny goes.'

"Funny, but I thought that was a sound management practice, not something to complain about. But I think it points out pretty well the differences between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to government spending, and even more so, how many roadblocks the Democrats in the merit system have put in front of the Fletcher administration's policies and procedures."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. We're frustrated that the Fletcher administration has not been able to get these rogue Democrats in the merit system under control. If they were going to be indicted for personnel violations, they should have really done something noteworthy and fired half the state workforce and replaced them with conservatives who value and treasure taxpayer dollars, instead of squandering them just because they're in the budget. Now THAT would have eliminated a lot of waste, fraud and abuse.