A message dinged on Bethany’s phone. A friend from a neighboring county had caught wind of a rumor: Polk County had spent $80,000 on rugs for the courthouse renovation.
Surely not, she thought.
The next day, another message, from someone else. “I heard the county spent $80k on rugs for the courthouse.”
Mind you, this is the same courthouse that has already blown past its budget by an estimated $7 million. So the whispers weren’t exactly new. They’d been landing in the inboxes of anyone who bothered to question the process, ongoing.
But Bethany has learned, the hard way, to collect evidence before she assumes, jumps to conclusions, or believes something just because. So the prudent move was to go straight to the source. What, exactly, had Polk County, Texas spent on rugs for its “new” old courthouse?
She drafted a request for all records pertaining to rug purchases and sent it off to the county.
The public information officer answered her email request with something absolutely astounding, and it wasn’t the answer she had hoped for.
To find out who picked out, approved, and paid for the rugs, and what they cost in total, she was sent a response stating that to produce these documents, a county employee would need to spend 108 hours and 50 minutes gathering that information, and Bethany would pay the tab up front.
A $1,642.00 tab, to be exact.
No answers unless she pays for nearly 109 hours of county employee time “records searching” just to be emailed an amount and an explanation of how they got there- IF any rugs had even been purchased yet.
Needless to say, Bethany was disappointed. How can anyone give accurate information to refute rumors when the truth sits behind a price tag that equals an entire year of life insurance payments for some families?
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this story is about me. Bethany is me, the one who pokes, prods, and questions. Sometimes just because I can, but mostly because I want the truth and I want to understand what is actually going on in my county.
So the facts I do have, are provided below- here’s the estimate I refused, and I have submitted a new request. Much simpler this time:
Just show me the receipts.
—Bethany Evans
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