So much for transparency
Thanks, EPB, for your unflinching efforts to embrace transparency with more noise and a smokescreen.
Once again, you released a set of numbers that don't really jibe with much of anything you've released in the previous months while you've claimed that costs don't add up for streetlights that would save money, be environmentally friendly and offer improved safety in Chattanooga.
Unfortunately, you're losing the reputation battle, while we ratepayers and taxpayers are losing the better environment and smarter money war. Now instead of talking about lights that use less energy, make streets brighter, meter themselves and eliminate countless miles in worker trips to see if they are still burning, we're lost in your numbers fog to cover embarrassing accounting.
Now we're just having discussions of discussions.
Depending on whose audit we believe, EPB either overbilled the city $1.2 million over seven years (says city auditor Stan Sewell) or $1.5 million (says EPB auditor Mauldin & Jenkins) minus about $1.4 million in obtuse accounting lines such as a TVA burn-hour calculation and a line-loss estimate that TVA itself doesn't invoke on either EPB or other local utilities. Using that shell game, EPB's bottom-line overbilling was $17,049.
Meanwhile, local light manufacturer Don Lepard -- who's had to lay off workers and has about 5,000 unpurchased lights in inventory because the city didn't follow through with planned second and third installation phases -- has filed a whistleblower lawsuit on behalf of Chattanooga seeking $10 million for the city, the taxpayers and himself. He's filed a similar suit on behalf of Red Bank and East Ridge.
Officials with the city and EPB, which is city owned and governed by a five-member board appointed by the city, say they can't negotiate a settlement with Lepard as long as his suit is pending. The reality is they can, they just don't want to because the whistle-blower manufacturer would have to be part of that negotiation.
So lawyers will be making money. Our money. You know -- all that money we were supposed to be saving by not changing out all the city's 26,000 street lights even before some of them burned out. That was the logic used by the city and EPB for not honoring the agreement a previous mayor and City Council made with the manufacturer.
EPB President and CEO Harold DePriest on Tuesday released -- for about the third time -- a few sheets of the EPB-paid-for audit by Mauldin & Jenkins. The public has still not seen the final and complete audit, but city auditor Stan Sewell has, and he debunked it weeks ago, item by item.
If we just blow away the smoke and shut out the noise, there are only two reasonable and related questions: Where are the new, better lights, and why aren't they up on the poles saving us money?
Paper or plastic? Not in California
California became the first state in the country Tuesday to ban single-use plastic bags in grocery, convenience and drug stores. The law, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, was driven by a buildup of litter and damage to aquatic ecosystems.
Calling the legislation a step in the right direction, Brown said California "won't be the last" state to take such an action. California's move marks a major milestone for environmental activists who have successfully pushed plastic bag bans in cities across the United States, including Chicago, Austin and Seattle.
Predictably, a national coalition of plastic bag manufacturers immediately said the ban would lead to the loss of thousands of plastic manufacturing jobs, and the group's leaders say they will seek a voter referendum to repeal the state law, which is scheduled to take effect in July 2015.
The bill includes $2 million in loans for plastic bag manufacturers to shift their operations to make reusable bags, and we would hope that perhaps some business managers will see opportunity there, rather than continue to manufacture buggy whips.
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico also have pending legislation that would ban single-use bags, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.