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HomeNewsArchivesHOW TO STOP GOVERNMENT WASTE: JUST DO IT

HOW TO STOP GOVERNMENT WASTE: JUST DO IT

Dear Source:
It's really just plain evil. I agree that it's time for full-blown recall elections, a federal oversight board and some better-late-than-never prosecutions of Virgin Islands government officials and "partnered" individuals.
This government loves to create "boards" with friends and family and overpay them. They're wasting our money. They're letting "friends," voting blocs and relatives steal from us. They're wasting the future for everyone except themselves. Increasing income taxes by 10 percent will only give them enough to get by for a while, and they'll waste that, too.
Cut the bloated budget. Show some intestinal fortitude. Stop the clear, unadulterated, obvious, pervasive government employment nepotism. Fire people who do nothing but bleed the system, sitting around all day with an unauthorized daycare center running in their government offices, ignoring the taxpayer on the other side of the glass or sitting in the waiting area while they cruise the Internet.
Where in America do these types of things go on and on and on? Only in the Virgin Islands!
Prosecute for "disappearing funds." Prosecute for using departments and government equipment and employees as one's own little resource for private gain. Everybody knows where the bodies are buried, who's doing it, what they did and when they did it, going back years and years, but nobody has the backbone to dig them up and prosecute those responsible. Come on, Nissman!
We're paying for their vehicles — well over a thousand — and all the waste that entails, their gasoline to drive around the island at all hours of the workday and weekends. What business does a Property and Procurement Department vehicle have in Hull Bay at 10 a.m. on a work day? I have to look the other way when I see a government vehicle now because it irritates me to see an SUV full of family cruising around on the taxpayer dollar.
Restrictions on government vehicle use? Yeah, right. A 36-hour work week? I believe that's already in place — less than that — at full pay.
Why are most government departments so terrible at their jobs? Why so much impasse? Why so much obvious waste? As sad as it sounds, I've heard ruminations that if a hurricane, God forbid, hits us, Homeland Security will take over, mooting the V.I. government completely. It's time for a complete overhaul to take back the government from the thieves that get away with stealing the taxpayer blind (I'd refer to post-hurricane looting, but that'd be too easy a swipe).
Lay out your personal finances for us, past and present legislators, just like politicians in the real America have to do. Where'd you get it? How'd you get it? How'd your (insert: husband, wife, partner, friend) get the contract to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions?
Recall election now. This government needs a wake-up call. Its leaders need to realize their self-importance in governing a populace of a mere 100,000-plus citizens is way overblown, unnecessary, costly and — beyond the corruption that wastes a large percentage of every tax dollar — just plain wrong. Until the citizens of the V.I. say stop, all of the foregoing will continue with absolute impunity. They honestly believe they deserve everything they can lay their hands on — an attitude of "what's in it for me" that seems to pervade society hereabouts.
Good luck with your tax hikes, governor. I'd guess you can probably get ready for a fight, using the financial resources of the opposition to fight them under the guise of "for the people," just like you have all along, as with the tax cases.
Here's hoping the U.S. Supreme Court slaps down the attorney general quickly on the tax cases, thereby permitting the other side to collect costs and attorney fees again from the taxpayer. The people who paid the taxes, fought the system and won will again, through taxes, pay for the V.I. government "losers." Thanks a lot for your concern for our legal rights here, rather than having systems in place and performing property taxation analyses and review fairly, intelligently, correctly, and in a balanced and timely manner to begin with.
Kevin Weatherbee
St. Thomas

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