Somewhere the late, former Commissioner John Clarke is laughing and saying, “I told you so.”
Clarke was the main proponent of a city-wide audit and for years; and for years, he and Commissioner Catherine Rice have watched their motions for such an audit hit a brick wall over and over.
Now, we have the director of the Housing and Community Development, Hawthorne Welcher, on paid leave after “misplacing” $6.5 million, and the head of Planning and Zoning, Carla Delaney, resigning suddenly and jumping ship with her golden parachute.
A few years ago, The Augusta Press exposed an agency that is deeply tied to both of the aforementioned departments, for its freewheeling spending, under the table schemes such as building a strip club on city owned land and other dubious actions by its director, Shawn Edwards.
Of course we are talking about the Augusta Land Bank Authority.
Delaney sat on the board of that entity and was privy to the information long before TAP ran the series of articles showing how the Land Bank abused taxpayer funds.
Those three organizations have long been joined at the hip, with missions, and money overlapping. Then, of course, are their explanations of how money is spent, and, sorry, we are not buying the excuse that the Housing and Community Development Department needed to spend almost $700 on trash bags.
John Clarke was right, a full-on audit of all city departments is the only way to shine the light on the shenanigans that have been going on behind the scenes for probably decades.
If the Augusta Commission wants to retain even a shred of credibility with the public, then they will order the audit and not allow it to get bogged down in the bureaucracy as they have the much ballyhooed, but in the end, worthless audit of the Parks and Recreation Department.
