Just when you thought South Carolina’s state government had the market cornered when it comes to pouring money down the drain of incompetent government bureaucracies, along comes the City of Columbia with its own claim to taxpayer-funded infamy.
According to a report published Sunday by The State newspaper’s Adam Beam, Columbia’s city government awarded fat bonuses to bureaucrats while running up multimillion-dollar deficits over the last five years.
From the report:
While Columbia officials were running multimillion-dollar budget deficits and spending $24.7 million in the city’s emergency reserves during the past five years, some of the city’s highest paid employees saw pay increases of a combined $5 million …
… the pay of city employees is being discussed by city leaders this year because this is a critical year for the city’s budget. The city’s emergency reserves have dwindled to less than $3 million, leaving no cushion should the city run another multimillion-dollar deficit.
A majority of City Council members have been unwilling to approve across-the-board salary cuts or mass layoffs of employees to address the city’s budget woes.
Of course they’re not willing to approve such cuts. After all, everybody knows that the first things to go during a revenue “shortfall” are front-line public services.
The last thing to be cut? Overpaid bureaucrats.
Sheesh. No wonder the city of Columbia is known as the “face of the recession.”
Meanwhile, two of the City Council members who presided over this bumbling incompetence are in hot water after they got busted using federal funds to benefit their businesses.
City Councilwoman Tameika Isaac-Devine – the most egregious violator – is under fire for a $280,000 federal loan that somehow wound up going toward her new law office building, while Councilman Daniel Rickenman is facing scrutiny over a separate loan related to his business.
You can read an update on that sad saga by reading this story from the reporter who broke it wide open, Jerrita Patterson of WACH TV 57 (FOX – Columbia, SC).
Meanwhile, props to Adam Beam for his excellent reporting on this story. It’s good to see his newspaper actually pursuing these flagrant abuses of taxpayer money for a change.
By Todd October 11, 2009 at 10:20 am
Of course Mayor Bob had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it. Right. We have to put up with six months of people blabbering about his outstanding leadership and consensus building. With payoffs like these, yeah, he was building great consensus.
By Soft Sigh From Hell October 11, 2009 at 10:40 am
Perhaps Austin was a good police chief, I cannot judge, but he was worse than worthless afterwards in Columbia. And imagine how the academics on Benedict’s faculty think about giving a nonacademic hack the dean’s position as a sop.