BuckeyeBlog

At a time he could surely use it, Governor Strickland garnered some good press coverage for his decision to forgo a hotel room in Washington, D.C., while attending President Obama’s inauguration. Instead, he and his entourage slept in Ohio’s Washington, D.C., office. Left out of this story, however, is the fact that Ohio taxpayers are shelling out a pretty penny to maintain that office and engage in other federal lobbying efforts. Around $800,000 a year is being spent on these efforts, part of which goes to pay for Ohio’s DC office. Another chunk of that goes to pay for Ohio’s membership in the National Governors Association (the Buckeye Institute has a few words on this expenditure here).

Now, some will surely claim that this money isn’t wasteful. After all, Ohio needs a presence in Washington, D.C., right? True, and the Constitution provides for this — that is why we send Senators and Representatives to the nation’s capital. Ohio’s DC office is a lobbying shop which seems mainly focused on securing more federal money for the state. So your tax dollars are being used to try and get the feds to spend more of your tax dollars. Using tax money for this type of advocacy seems pretty fishy to me. But, what the heck, some good came of it, right? Ohio taxpayers didn’t have to spend any money for a hotel room for the governor. Personally, I’d have preferred that the governor shell out $500 to stay the night at a Howard Johnson’s in DC than have the state’s taxpayers shell out $800,000 a year to pay for this office and its activities. But that’s just me, I guess.

At a time when many local governments are complaining that they don’t have enough funds (i.e., you need to pay higher taxes), state audits reveal that some local government officials are making some pretty questionable purchases with your tax money:

[Valley Township Auditor Bonnie Turner] voided a township check for $7,645, reissued herself a new check and cashed it; she accepted cash payments totaling $3,700 for the purchase of several township cemetery plots and didn’t deposit the money with a bank; she illegally used $2,353 in township funds to pay her personal home telephone bills for two years; and she owes the township $171 for a cell phone and accessories that she failed to return after she resigned.

The audit found that her husband, Larry Turner, the former township fire department safety officer, must repay $1,237 in township funds that he spent illegally on his personal cell phone in 2006 and 2007 after his position was terminated Jan. 10, 2006.

The audit also found that their son, current township worker Jonathan Turner, owes the township $106 for a cell phone and accessories that he failed to return following a reassignment to other job duties.

The best part?

Mrs. Turner said neither she nor her family did anything wrong, and that it is the trustees’ responsibility to sign off on spending decisions. 

“I never took anything that didn’t belong to me,” she said.

The Guardian has obtained an unreleased World Bank study that finds the use of biofuels at fault for up to 75% increases in global food prices. Unsurprisingly, government officials are attempting to push the study aside and ignore it. The Guardian reports that the study remains unpublished to avoid embarrassing President Bush, who has heavily pushed biofuel technology.

“Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises,” said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. “It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.”

(more…)