Municipal Financial Ethics: Guilford County, NC's three year $527 million swing

…inquire, search,

and ask diligently

Deuteronomy 13:15

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If Guilford County owed $557,405,000 with $181,035,000 in the bank
after Fiscal Year 08/09,
and intends to owe about $984,775,000 with about $91,178,439 in reserves
after Fiscal Year 2010/11,
did Guilford County’s Commissioners
just hit taxpayers up for about $527,131,561 as revenues fall
and Federal, State and City of Greensboro contributions dwindle?

$984,775,000 Debt
-$557,405,000
=$437,275,000 More Debt

+

$181,035,000 Cash Reserves
-$91,178,439
= $89,856,561 Less Cash

= $527,131,561 more money allocated in the name of the electorate
collateralized by mandatory taxation.
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We are never deceived;

we but deceive ourselves.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Is Guilford County borrowing to spend

almost 100% more than we owed three years ago?

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At what point can the Greensboro News and Record be considered complicit

in hiding/concealing/obscuring material financial information from the public

who rely on the paper of record for impartial oversight of local government?

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This nation will remain the land of the free

only so long as it is the home of the brave…

…this republic was not established by cowards;

and cowards will not preserve it.

Elmer Davis

News Reporter, Author, Peabody Award Recipient,

United States Office of War Information Director during World War II

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Are the less informed easier to persuade

than the more?

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Public sentiment is everything
.

With public sentiment nothing can fail

Without it nothing can succeed

He who molds public opinion is greater than he who enacts laws

Abraham Lincoln

Would you rather be happy

or know?

Where there is little or no public opinion

there is likely to be bad government

which sooner or later becomes autocratic government

William Lyon Mackenzie King

.

Do some think most know more than they ought to?

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Our dominant media

are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards

whose mission is not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

for the whole body of our republic

but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders

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National Media Reform Conference