Day: February 9, 2017
Mayor Fillingame releases statement to WLOX on missing DoJ Funds, continues to wax nonsensical
Last night’s WLOX newscasts at 6 and 10 both featured the Bay St Louis DoJ Equitable Sharing fund disaster, first with the 6PM newscast showing an interview with Councilman Boudin where he disclosed the Council was filing claims on the bonds of the Mayor, the late Chief Denardo and the two City Clerks (Kolf and Smith) that had a hand in misspending the Federal grant, which was intended for use in law enforcement. Mayor Fillingame sent in a statement after the 6PM newscast that said:
“I think if it is their personal desire to pursue a claim against any employee or official against all of the professional advice that they have received, there will be great personal liability. The only losses that have been suffered by the taxpayers of Bay St. Louis has been the loss of money spent by the council pursuing claims that don’t exist. We have spent exuberant amounts of money on having this reviewed, audited and looked at legally. The council has gotten no advice from any of the auditors or agencies that have reviewed this, nor have they had any of the city’s legal counsel advise them that there is any claims against any person that has participated in the DOJ program. That money was put in the general fund account and spent by the counsel. None of the money was lost, it was spent in the process of serving the community. Before you have a claim you have to have a loss, and there has been no loss.”
Today Slabbed received an excerpt of a draft of the OSA performance review which debunks the Council going “against all the professional advice that they have received”:
In fairness to the Mayor the final report linked above omitted the repayment language but to say the Council is going against all the professional advice they have received is inaccurate as the above clearly indicates the topic of how to handle a repayment was covered in the OSA performance review. Whether a loss has occurred, a topic Slabbed covered, is a legal question that will have to be sorted out.
Meantime I wonder if anyone else giggled hearing WLOX anchor Christina Garcia use the term “mingle” instead of the proper financial term “commingle” to describe what happened with the DoJ funds in the Bay?
Then and Now: Mississippi Power in line for another Credit Downgrade after Kemper Cost Continue to Skyrocket
RFP gets the credit for this post for doing most all of the legwork gathering these blasts from the past. First up is the latest from Moody’s Investor Service.
“There’s a big capital cost, I get that, but the energy coming out of this technology will be super-cheap,” Fanning said.He said Kemper’s technology, which would capture carbon dioxide and other byproducts and sell them to other users is “a home run, not only for the state of Mississippi but for America and the world.” ~ Tom Fanning, Chairman and CEO of Southern Company
Bonus quote from the above article:
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Republican U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper and others attacked President Barack Obama’s administration and environmentalists.
Giuliani said those opposed to burning coal and drilling for oil are “living in some kind of ideological dream world that makes sense only to you.”
“As long as I’m governor, Mississippi is going to have an energy policy, and our energy policy is more American energy. It’s projects like these and efforts like this that will help us (economically), not only now, but in the long term. . . This is going to produce reliable power for Mississippi for decades and decades to come.” ~ Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour
Bonus quote:
But Barbour praised the plant for its relative eco-friendliness, saying, “The Left said there’s no such thing as clean coal — Well, this is it!”