County Govt Slush Fund
What is wrong with our local government? It has the same excessives found in the State and Federal Government.
Instead of cutting costs in this economic downturn, our public servants confiscate more of our wages and spend it like its their money. Did you get your latest property tax increases?
Press Conference in Front of County Council Building, Dec 7, 2010
Harry Kibler of Rino Hunt, and Butch Taylor of the Greenville Tax Payers Association explained the citizen's position against illegal spending habits of individual Councilman.
Besides the unrestrained spending, this council passes intrusive and unnecessary regulations, i.e. Tree Ordinances and rules that let the government intervene in your life. The language and formatting of the laws is numblingly incomprehensible. They are working on taking getting control over private property where the grass is not cut to government standards. The endless parade of rules and complex mandates can be found at :
Why do taxes keep going up? There are slush funds, litigation costs to defend slush funds and fees for comprehensive land use planning so the government can have more control over our private property.
The general mindset of the Council revolves around zoning and land use planning. Dealing with hard issues like gang violence, unsafe neighborhoods, and supporting the family are down played.
Each Councilman has over $20,000 to throw around annually.
Butch Kirven did not want to hear the outrage over excessive and wrongful spending during the last public meeting of the Greenville County Council in 2010. To give the slush fund a legitimate spin, it is now treated as a consent fund.
The Slush Fund
The Greenville County Council violates state law and is defiant. The incumbent Councilman vote themselves individual slush funds that exceed $20,000 each. Using tax dollars they ingratiate themselves for their next elections. Handing out the money is the feel good part of a Councilman's job. The problem is it is your money and did you notice the increase in your property taxes for the new year. The percentage increase is large.
Despite more than one court ruling on plaintiff complaints against the use of individual Councilman spending accounts, these Councilman use your tax dollars to mount continuous legal defenses. Recently, The Times Examiner reports that “Judge John Few ruled on February 10, 2010 that Greenville County Council illegally delegated legislative authority to individual Council members so they could make independent expenditures.”
Even after the court ruling, they keep setting up annual Council District Expense Funds.
To keep their walking around money, the incumbent Councilman use your tax dollars to fund prolonged legal defenses. Despite past Court Ruling over the years stating the Council is in violation of State Law, they persist in the violations and spend everyone’s tax dollars to fight the court decisions.
The November 17, 2010 edition of the Times Examiner reports that the Court ordered the County to reimburse $60,000 dollars to the plaintiff, Edward D. Sloan / South Carolina Public Interest Foundation, for his legal expenses in challenging the Greenville County Councils illegal activities. These expenses are just the most recent in the ongoing expenditures to keep Slush Funds for Councilmen. They do not want to admit just how much accumulated legal expenses have come and gone over the years.
Judge D. Garrison Hill's order stated "The County and the public benefited from this litigation".
"The Court finds that this {2003} Attorney General opinion accurately states the law regarding delegation of legislature authority as it has been understood for at least 100 years, and if Defendants did not know this legal principle, they were willfully ignorant of it."
"Even after Plaintiffs provided a copy of the 2003 Attorney General opinion to Defendants, Greenville County Council appropriated annual Slush Funds that delegated legislative authority to its individual council members so they could make independent expenditures for fiscal years ending June 30, 2008, June 30, 2009, June 30, 2010 and June 30, 2011. Under the circumstances, Defendants were not "substantially justified" in pressing their vigorous and persistent defense".
The Greenville Taxpayers Association at a cold Press Conference in front of Greenville County Council Building on University Ridge Road.
Some of the Slush Fund spending includes donations of your tax dollars to the NAACP, Bennetts Express, the Urban League, Activate Upstate, and other institutions centered in Cities.
Why is the County Tax Payer sending dollars to organizations in the city? Plus, different Councilman gave money to the same thing, i.e. the County Recreation District, the City of Travelers Rest, the City of Simpsonville, the City of Fountain Inn and Phillis Wheatley Association. The County Recreation District already is well funded by the County.
Look at the spending done by the individual Greenville County Council members undertheir individual pages. The individual District Pages are located in the County Government Section of this web site:
Click on the Individual Council Districts for their profile and spending.
District 22 - Bob Taylor Vice Chair
District 27 - Butch Kirven Chairman
To check the latest on Councilman Expenditures, there is a link on Financial Operations in Greenville County:
http://www.greenvillecounty.org/apps/transparency/
What We Want!
The spending and justification for the use of tax payer dollars needs to be voted on by the whole Council. The money belongs to the people. Individual Slush Funds make it too easy to spend and are illegal for sound reasons. The Councilman need to wean themselves away from bad practices. And for crying out loud, stop wasting vast sums of tax money on litigation! This is the time when cutting Government spending has to be the highest priority.
http://www.greenvillecounty.org/county_council/
Citizens should attend the Council Meetings generally held on Tuesday and express their displeasure with the lack of respect for the law, and the wasteful use of your tax dollars. The Council requires that you sign up before the meeting starts at 6:00 PM to address the council and you are restricted to just a few minutes.
The Greenville County Mapping Application
http://www.gcgis.org/mapapp.html
To see Greenville County Council Districts, you have to select the Political Layer.