Thursday, August 25, 2005

Blunt appointees receive goods at bargain rate

The Columbia Tribune's Josh Flory has been a roll lately uncovering one story after another detailing troubling ethical problems involving Governor Matt Blunt and his appointees.
The latest involves the sale of office equipment from formerly state-operated license fee offices...offices which now are under the control for the most part of people who contributed to the Blunt election campaign.
Apparently, after State Auditor Claire McCaskill criticized the unloading of the equipment without bids, The Department of Revenue put up the items for bid...but did so without advertising the bids and only opened up the bids to the people who were appointed to operate the revenue offices.
In one instance, a television, three fax machines, 15 calculators, eight step-stools, dozens and chairs and numerous other office items including bulletin boards, telephones and desks sold for a grand total of $151, according to Flory's article in today's paper.
The story originally broke in the St. Joseph newspaper on June 21 that state equipment was being sold cheaply to that city's new fee agent without any bids being taken. Now Department of Revenue officials are saying that was not the case and that fee agent placed a successful bid on Aug. 7 for those items.
Ms. McCaskill says these revelations are "troubling." She is being kind.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe if we recall Blunt, we can get Stallone as our Governor.

Anonymous said...

Durn but I guess it is time for me to start contributing to the Matt Blunt reelection fund if I am going to get one of those "freebe" jobs and make a lot of money off the general public.