A bunch of guys from the neighborhood had come to my house to play basketball and when we were taking a break between games, Ken Pelto said to me, “You’re the reason I moved into the neighborhood.”
Ken and his wife, Carol, had bought the house across the street from ours. He was a good neighbor and a heck of a basketball player. We nicknamed him “Hands” because his hands were so quick — he got a lot of steals.
Anyway, what Hands said made me happy and maybe a little proud.
“How’s that?” I said, encouraging him to brag on me a little more.
The Pelto’s had moved down here from up North somewhere, Wisconsin, I think, so he could work at the old Square D plant on U.S 64 East near Knightdale.
Hands told me that where he used to live he had to work in his yard all day on Saturday, and on Sunday, too, sometimes. If you didn’t keep your yard ship shape, he said, you got a visit from the neighborhood yard committee.
“I hate cutting grass, working in the yard all weekend,” he said. “And when I saw your yard I knew I wouldn’t have to, I knew this neighborhood didn’t have a yard committee.”
NOTE: The first time it snowed after they moved in Carol called my wife, Donna, and asked: “Where are the snow plows?” We still laugh about that on days when our street is covered with snow and ice and we can’t go anywhere: Where are those snow plows?
David Raynor and I reported to readers of The News & Observer that North Carolina state government had wasted at least $400 million on a mental health “reform” program. And when the smoke cleared, it turned out our estimate was low.
Herblock, who won three Pulitzer Prizes, lampooned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger as Santa Clause wearing the $640 toilet seat like a collar.
But you know what? I don’t think people who are living paycheck to paycheck –that’s almost all of us at one time or another– pay much attention to numbers that big. We pay attention to things we can related to. I bet almost everyone who who saw it remembers the Reagan-era story about the Pentagon buying toilet seats for $640 each [$1,429 in 2019 dollars]. We can related to a toilet seat, can’t we — and we know that price is outrageous.
When I was an investigative reporter I found and reported some big money waste stories, but I suspect some of the smaller waste stories I reported had more impact. Here are five examples, following by my favorite waste story.
* * *
“On Wednesday, July 31, the state Department of Public Instruction abolished [a man’s] $26.11-an-hour [$36.85 in 2019 dollars] job to comply with cost-cutting orders from the General Assembly. The very next day, [he] returned to work in the same building, at the same desk, doing the same job — at a cost to taxpayers of $75 [$105.86 in 2019 dollars] an hour.”
[How could that be? DPI leaders paid a contractor to hire the fellow and assign him to the same job.]
* * *
“The government program to provide temporary housing to victims of Hurricane Floyd has cost taxpayers about $2,250 [$3,186 in 2019 dollars] per family per month, about three times the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in Raleigh.”
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“Nine new 1986 Ford Crown Victories, which cost the state $10,721 each [$25,094 in 2019 dollars], have been parked in a fenced yard near the N.C. State Fairgrounds for a year awaiting assignment to agents who enforce state liquor laws.”
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“[The] state superintendent of public instruction, stayed 10 nights in a free hotel room in Asheville this summer and then collected $441 [$1,023 in 2019 dollars] from the state for lodging. Nine of [his] subordinates also stayed in ‘complimentary’ hotel rooms for up to 10 days while attending business meetings and then billed the state for lodging.”
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“Gov. Bob Scott hired an old political friend last week, at a salary of $25,410, [$157,159 in 2019 dollars] as director of a department that no longer exists. If he had wanted to, the governor could have given the legal responsibilities of that directorship to someone already on the state payroll…”
* * *
This is my favorite, about the secretary of the state Department of Human Resources’ self-improvement course. Before he took the course his subordinates were required to evaluate him so, when he finished the course, he could see how much he had improved, I guess.
Here goes:
“When subordinates of [the boss] were asked to list his strengths as an executive, they said he works tirelessly. They called him brilliant. They praised him as committed, compassionate, honest, insightful, loyal and tenacious. And that was before he spent $29,000 [$48,691 in 2019 dollars] of taxpayers’ money to get better.”
