The TV media is doing a very poor job of informing the people of Beaufort County on corruption in county government | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

Complex issues just can't be covered in two-minutes

    Josh Birch filed a report Friday (10-10-14) on WNCT-TV that is a perfect illustration of the flimsy reported much of the TV media have been doing on the jail issue in Beaufort County. Here's why we say "flimsy."

    A core issue regarding the jail debate is/should be how much it will cost. And that cost is most important issue for the taxpayer. So the real issue is: How much will a new jail cost the taxpayer. In Birch's report he allows Al Klemm to say that it will be "at worst...2.3 cents." Birch does not challenge Klemm, or even clarify for the viewers, what "2.3 cents" actually means. Then he reports that Hood Richardson said it will be a "15% increase." Yet he does not challenge Richardson or explain to his viewers how the "15%" is computed.

    Now common sense and a fifth grade math competence will tell anyone that both Klemm and Richardson cannot be right. Birch leaves it entirely up to the viewer to decipher the truth without providing them any information to do so. Thus, we will do it for him.

    Klemm's projected "cost" of 2.3 cents is based on Klemm's contention that the tax rate would not have to be raised but 2.3 cents on $100 of property value or even less. Richardson's 15% is computed by taking the estimated increase in annual expenditures for debt service, increased operating costs and estimated increases in personnel costs into account. He then computes how much of a tax increase would be necessary on the current valuation of property in the county and determines that a 15% increase in the rate would be necessary to raise the amount of new money that the jail would cost (which is different, incidentally than a 15% increase in everybody's tax bill).

    Now, who is correct, Klemm or Richardson? Obviously they both are, in the way they manipulate their numbers. The sad part is that Birch does not provide enough detailed information to allow the viewer to determine what the truth really is. Why did he not ask Mr. Klemm: "How can you build and operate a $20 million plus facility without taxes going up? If you have enough fund balance to do it would that not mean you've taxed the people too much in the past? And why would you not give the people a tax cut if you've taken in more money than you needed to spend? What about the other needs, such as emergency health services, schools, community college etc.?" The correct way to look at this is to ask how much money you're going to spend to build the facility and then what the principal and interest will be on that amount of money and how much more you will spend every year above what you're now spending. That's how much it will "cost" the people each year. Birch apparently does not even understand the issue of additional annual operating costs of a new facility.

    Now we understand that it is a difficult task to provide complex information such as this in a two minute and five second sound bit. But therein is the problem as we see it. The TV media is doing, for the most part, a lousy job of informing the debate on the jail issue, and the power struggle that underlies it. Note that Richardson tell Birch "its about control..." and Birch passes up a good chance to inform his viewers of what Richardson is trying to tell him. If you are interested in this underlying issue click here. When Richardson says it is about "control" he means it is about who controls the Board of Commissioners. The same thing is now playing out on the oversight of the Sheriff's Office by the Commission. In that instance it comes down to whether the Democrats on the Board can get a Republican to go along with them in protecting a cover-up of the Sheriff's Office or whether the public is going to be provided information as essential as inventory records and an independent audit of how $700,00 in drug buy money has been used.

    WNCT is guilty on that issue just as they are on the cost of the jail issue. They sent the same reporter to investigate the Sheriff's accountability issue. All they did was accept what the Sheriff's Department told them. And of course, the Sheriff's people told them "we're doing everything right." They accepted that just as they accepted Klemm claiming they can build and operate a 20 million dollars plus facility for "2.3 cents."

    Let us be clear. We don't expect WNCT or any TV outlet to do in-depth reporting on frequent and fast-breaking complex issues. Some things simply cannot be covered adequately in the time constraints they have on them. But we do think they should ask the hard questions with the time they do have.

    For example, why would the Sheriff not want an outside/independent audit done if he feels he has "one of the best programs in the state." Seems to us like he would want to bring in an independent auditor to document that? At a minimum the TV people could tell the readers "we did not verify the accuracy of the records we were told about and shown..."

    Why would Birch, or any reporter, not ask the four commissioners who voted not to do the audit why they don't want the records verified? Same for the weapons inventory. Why would commissioners not want to see the Sheriff's Department inventory on a regular basis? Why would they not want to see the staffing reports of the Sheriff's Department to assess turnover and vacancies, or the growth in "desk jobs" in recent years? Why would they not want to see the accident reports and vehicle damage reports from the Department? And beyond that why would they not want to see the records of the military material the Federal government gave to "Beaufort County" and who requested it, where it went and what was done with it. Why would the fact that the Federal government suspended North Carolina from the program for inadequate record-keeping not send up red flags to these five commissioners? Yes, we include Gary Brinn in this.

    And now we have one of the commissioners playing the same game. Gary Brinn gave a report at the October meeting and pronounced: "everything at the Sheriff's Department is about a perfect as it can be..." or something such as that. He simply went over the Sheriff's Department and accepted what he was told and shown. He then concluded everything was kosher. He refuses to vote for an independent verification of the records. We asked him how he verified the validity of the records. He had no response. We asked him why he did not seek advice from experts on how to review the records and operations and suggested he talk to the Secretary of Public Safety, who is a former FBI agent in charge of investigating government corruption in North Carolina. He obviously knows the resources that are available to a commissioner in verification of such records and procedures. We suggested he investigate how Franklin County handled a similar situation there. Mr. Brinn dismissed those suggestions.

    The problem as we see it is that the TV media does not and probably cannot adequately address these complex issues. But the major problem, as we see it, is that the majority on the Board of Commissioners is simply complicit in the lack of transparency.

    And we believe Hood Richardson got it exactly right when he said "it about control." We would put it a bit differently. It is about power. It is about keeping the people from exercising the power they have by simply keeping them in the dark. Control of information is power. Perhaps control of information is the greatest power government officials have. When the media allows them to spoon feed the public only what they want the public to know and think, and when those responsible for providing oversight allow government officials to be less than transparent, then the system breaks down. It becomes corrupt. By corrupt we mean it does not work the way it should. It does not operate as it is intended. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that is exactly what we have going on in Beaufort County.

poll#54