"National Lampoon" Vacation

Unlike some folks I don’t go hollering and crying to anybody who will listen when somebody points out some of my short comings. Except for perhaps God, the preacher, his significant other, and the congregation of the Church that the chairman attends regularly, no one that I know of cares who may or may not have stayed with him in room # 289 on the nights of March six through nine of this year at the Omni Shoreham Hotel and Resort in Washington D.C. All I know is that the hotel bill says the room was billed for double occupancy (documented by public records request) and I got stuck paying for it. What we, the citizens of Jackson County do care about is the wasteful, frivolous manner in which the chairman of the Jackson County Commissioners has spritzed away our money and made us a laughing stock in all the other nearby counties. Mr. Chair, you can make a reasonable argument in normal financial times that going on junkets for professional development here in the state of North Carolina is an acceptable use of the taxpayer’s money. But these are not normal times and this trip was seemingly all about gallivanting all over Washington D.C. and hobnobbing with bigwigs in our nation’s capital. By the way, I wanted to thank the person or persons involved for their release of information to another local media outlet. It seems that the chairman spent even more money than I thought. According to records that were released, in addition to what the Patriot found, the chairman spent $490.00 for conference registration and $30.00 for a “Congressional Breakfast” also. His seeming vacation in Washington D.C. cost the taxpayers of Jackson County a total of at least $2,267 dollars! I’ll bet that there are at least a dozen families here in Jackson County that could have used that money to help heat their homes this winter—but the chairman already burned it up in Washington.

As was claimed by one individual, my assumptions are not false or unfounded. They are not even assumptions. The hard evidence that has been obtained through public records requests makes the conclusions that a reasonable person would conclude clear and rational. The bottom line is that the N.C. Association of County Commissioners would not reimburse the chairman to go to Washington D.C. for the National Association of County Commissioners meeting so he evidently decided to go on his own (regardless of whether the county manager budgeted it—he’ll budget anything that the chairman will tell him to) and hit the taxpayers of Jackson County for the bill on his D.C. “National Lampoon” Vacation. Representatives from only 44 (probably the richest 44 counties) of North Carolina’s 100 counties went to the same conference on the taxpayer’s dollar. Shame on them and shame on the chairman. We, the citizens of Jackson County, want our money reimbursed and our seat that the chairman is sitting in back.