The World Around You

This is just another sad event for our community, Two more Teenagers lost on our roads. My condolences to the families of David Wayne Barnett and Lila Michelle Broadway.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Prichard’s pension fund, which lacks $16 million needed to meet its obligations, regularly overpaid some former employees and for years sent benefits checks to the homes of dead retirees, city officials said this week.

Prichard officials said they first learned of those practices in 1999 after accountants looked into the city’s files. Since then, city officials have struggled with a myriad of incomplete records and dug through Social Security files to bring payments into line and to keep benefits checks from going to the homes of people who have died, Mayor Ron Davis said.

Although Davis and other officials have said the City Council failed to allocate enough money for the pension plan in years past, City Finance Director Dana Foster Allen said this week that about 90 percent of the problems jeopardizing the pension plan involve improper payouts.

“People were paid more than they were due,” Allen said.

In the case of checks mailed to homes of retirees who had died, some of the checks were cashed, possibly by relatives of the deceased, he said.

Mobile County District Attor ney John Tyson Jr. said those who cashed checks intended for the deceased could be charged with theft.

Why do people do stuff like this? Do they really think no one will ever figure it out? Now they’re going to have to pay back the funds they received that they didn’t deserve.

This looks like the press is trying to create an appearance of monkey business where there is none. There is no doubt in my mind that $380,000 to $500,000 is a low-ball estimate for a new voter registration system.

Count Representative Spencer Bachus as firmly against the President’s guest worker plan.