You may be wondering why I feel such deep concern over the goins on over in the nearby city of Helena-West Helena, beings that I live out in the country and all, but the fact of the matter is, it's the closest place to do much of our shopping.
I have made the decision to drive the same mileage north to another small town, in another county, to buy groceries once this EXTRA sales tax goes into effect but it'll mean driving an extra 14 miles or so, to yet another small town, to be able to shop for clothes and that sort of stuff.
Gas being what it is makes the longer drive a more difficult one, but I reckon I'll be doing it. It's the principle of the thing, you know? You can't help folks who are helping themselves to funds that don't belong to them!
Hear that All Ye in government in the City of Helena-West Helena?
This little article from The Daily World only reinforces my decisions.
Arkansas State Police served a search warrant on the city of Helena-West Helena Thursday and seized a hard drive from one of the city's computers.
Mayor James Valley stated that state trooper Dell Arnold aided state legislative auditors as they secured the electronic media dealing with payroll records for 2006 and 2007.
Valley said that Phillips County Judge Harvey Yates signed the warrant and state auditors left a receipt with the city's offices detailing what hardware was confiscated.
Valley said the auditors made a copy of the hard drive, took the device and installed a new one with the information copied on the disk so the city could continue to function.
Valley reported that the auditors wanted to restore some information that had been lost as the result of a recent computer crash.
"They want to see if they can restore the records that were lost through the recent hard drive crash," said Valley in a telephone interview.
The state will try torecover the data by utilizing a forensic data recovery program.
Valley said the state served the warrant and collected the hard drive in an attempt to gain a better log of records.
"They want to get a full and complete accounting of the records. They do this to protect the state audit and city and to clear the city of any wrongdoing. This does not implicate anyone," said Valley.
The legislative auditors have reported that they have been in city offices numerous times, trying to audit the city records only to be turned away because of record keeping issues, such as the crash of various computers.
"Typically, when a server crashes the information is gone," said Valley.
He reported that the city had entered data that at a later date could not be retrieved. He also reported that some employee's salary totals were incorrect in the system. He said one employee total showed the individual earning more than $40,000 over a six-month period.
No backups and a state seizure and it does not implicate anyone? I reckon Mayor Valley will be quite surprised to discover that there are ways to salvage the information from a crashed hard drive. I wonder how he'll explain away all that? If the folks responsible for keeping the financial records don't have enough damned sense to do a simple back up of important information, seems to me they need to be doing some firing around that place and hire some people who are actually capable of doing the job right. Don't ya think?
2 comments:
I've never had any trust in any policiticians, mayors, or anybody in power like that...seems they always end up getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak!
I wish I was the one looking at that hard drive!!!!!
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