Daily News

By Sharon Valentine
Fayetteville

As the heated discussions and growing concerns about mismanagement, waste, cronyism and political corruption whirl around the Katrina debacle, I am increasingly frustrated reading newspaper articles about recent "disclosures" here in North Carolina.

To list a few:

$14 million in taxpayer dollars that was "parked" in the executive departments of state government to fund pet projects of a few powerful members of the state General Assembly.

A state job created for a political ally of the speaker of the state House that bypassed the legislative process.

Resolutions buried deep in the state budget that funded projects never introduced to the General Assembly, approved by the Senate and yet signed into law by the governor. One of these "resolutions" funded an extension of Alexander Drive in the Research Triangle Park - a project that neither the Department of Transportation nor the Wake County commissioners knew anything about or wanted. Another capped fuel charges for US Air. Heaven knows what the others were but the real issue is the occurrence of a breakdown of the democratic process. (more…)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 4:25 am and is filed under Daily News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.