Give it back

This morning's City Paper relates the brouhaha that is surrounding the state's version of the Metro Nashville Council 'discretionary spending' fund in an article titled "Local lawmakers upset" (good luck with that link, btw). It's obvious it's not working very well on the state level either.

There's a lot of whining, complaining and but, but, buts and then, if you can hang on and read through all of that, comes this blast of freshness:

Sen. Jack Johnson (R-Brentwood) ...did not want anything to do with distributing the money. "I don't want to hand a check to anyone."

THANK YOU! A few more clear headed leaders like this and we could actually get something done in this state.

GREAT quote from TN Secretary of State Riley Darnell:

"I understand your [lawmakers] unhappiness with it, but I didn't create this mess. You did."

It's times like this it's very clear that that what the state legislature does best is create messes. The legislature decided that they'd be generous with our money and throw $100K to each house district and $300K to each senate district and in their overeagerness to spend last year's $1.5 billion overtaxes didn't take the time necessary to prevent the mess they're in now. Haste makes waste, gentlemen. And it's not always just your time and resources that get wasted.

The thought of actually returning this money to taxpayers and letting US decide which local projects were worthy of support, never seemed to enter their minds. And so now we've got professional politicians acting like 4 year olds fighting over who got the bigger piece of cake.

Just give it back and let us decide.