I told you so and I am not sorry to say it. In spite of Henry Smith's lack of an original idea about how to run the county government, I will give Mr. Smith credit for pretending that openness at the county level is a priority. As we stumble into our largest capital project, Mr. Smith and company released the top five sites for the new jail that were submitted to the state for consideration. It took the county over five months to release the names of the top five sites and it took citizens less than a day to figure out that the county had screwed up.

    It turns out that one of the sites had a church sitting on it and as soon as the congregation saw their property listed as a possible site, they realized that something was wrong. For five months, nobody bothered to call the pastor of the church to see if the congregation was planning to move and then for a month the county refused to release the sites submitted, only doing so after denying FOIL requests.

    Once they released the sites, the county government pretended that they wanted community involvement in the process and yet they schedule their meetings at a time when the majority of the people who will be footing the bill for the jail project will be working to pay for the highest property tax increase in the county's history. They also seemed to forget to include anybody, other than the superintendent and sheriff,who actually works at the jai on the committee. Isn't it common sense to have the people who are going to be working at the jail on a construction committee? I would like to think they would have a pretty good idea what we need in a new jail.

    This blunder, after nearly two years of grooming taxpayers with attacks on the state, could be an ominous sign of things to come. This is the same crew that sat on a huge tax increase, waiting until after the election to release it, and then they blamed it on the Nursing Home renovation project. Of course, nothing is the county's fault if you ask them; they were quick to spin the church site fiasco, as one legislator put it, “The information that was submitted to us on one of the properties was inaccurate, so we immediately removed it from the choices.”

    If I am reading that quote right, nobody bothered to double check whether the information that was submitted was even correct. It means that LaBella and Associates were paid with our tax dollars to evaluate land that was not available. A waste of time and a waste of money that could have been avoided by releasing the information back in August, or at the very least, in February before the sites were sent to the state for consideration. The fact remains, secrecy by governments costs taxpayers money. Of course, it may be just that they are going through the motions with the site selection; it is no secret that one of these properties has been rumored for over a year to be the site of the new jail.

    After two years, we have already racked up plenty of bills for consultation and yet we have no clue how the county is going to pay for this new jail. I take that back, even the legislative newbie is falling in line and throwing around the term, "state-mandated jail," as if to say that it is the states fault nobody maintained the hunk of concrete that was built less than forty years ago. That means we can be prepared for the finger to be pointed at the state for all of our financial woes in this county whose population is decreasing while its taxes increase.

    I sure as heck will not buy their lame excuses for the county's financial mismanagement, but I guarantee I will continue to pay a hefty price for it. You will be too.