Posted on 03/16/2018 8:07:09 AM PDT by Beautiful_Gracious_Skies
Full Title: Obscure pre-WWII law allowed Alabama sheriff Todd Entrekin to LEGALLY pocket at least $750,000 in taxpayer funds
GADSDEN, Ala. An Alabama sheriff legally used more than $750,000 of funds meant to feed inmates to purchase a beach house.
Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin told The Birmingham News he follows a state law passed before World War II that allows sheriffs to keep excess inmate-feeding funds for themselves.
Entrekin reported on state ethics forms that he made more than $250,000 each of the past three years through the funds.
The sheriffs annual salary is more than $93,000.
He and his wife purchased a four-bedroom house with an in-ground pool and canal access in September for $740,000. [snip]
Clearly this is a practice which is problematic because it creates an incentive for sheriffs to spend as little as possible on feeding folks.
Agreed
The only group this is possibly ‘obscure’ to are the taxpayers. I’m sure EVERY govt yahoo knows of these ‘laws’ a/o the processes involved....like many of those on welfare whom know all ways to game the system.
MATT: Jake, Elwood, how you doin’!? How was Joliet?
JAKE: Oh, It’s bad. on Thursday nights they serve a wicked pepper steak.
MATT: Can’t be as bad as the cabbage rolls at the Terre Haute Federal Pen.
ELWOOD: Or that oatmeal at the Cook County slammer.
MATT: They’re all pretty bad.
Hmmm. That looks like one of Michelle Obama’s skool lunches, except that it’s much too big.
For many years in this country the local sheriff in each community had access to many things like this. The old time sheriff could collect and keep taxes, or at least a good amount, and a lot of other things were used as income for the sheriff. I am not surprised the law was on the books, and would bet there are a lot more laws like this across the country.
That said, he knows things have changed...he knew it was technically legal for him to do this since the law was still there- but should have known people would take a dim view of it.
LOL!
I think you only have to give them bread and water ... and you end up with a nice place with a pool? Is this a great country or what? /s
I disagree. As part of punishment, prisoners should be force-fed cake, pie, and ice-cream until they emerge at 450 lbs each.
How much crime can you commit if you are 450 lbs?
No I'm not.
According to this article from 2013, Entrekin is an Alabama GOP “rising star!”
https://algop.org/rising-republican-star-etowah-county-sheriff-todd-entrekin/
I guess he can take his place amongst the other GOP “Rising Stars” in Alabama like Jeff Sessions, Roy Moore, and the fat bastrd, whose name excapes me, that the crooked governor appointed to replace Sessions in the Senate initially.
Here every day we are critical of the RATs, with good reason, but the truth of the matter is that the GOPE is full of the same bucket of crap as is the RAT Party!
The story goes on to say that this was one of several properties that the sheriff and his wife own. The total worth of their properties is $1.7M.
Are there any inmates he hasn’t starved to death?
well, at least the inmates didn’t have to wear pink panties /s
You have a point
450 lbs of flab is better than 250 lbs of muscle
Wuli, sometimes yes and sometimes no.
The Tax bill Trump signed into law last year is has a sunset date.
It should have been permanent.
I fault McConnell and Ryan for that nonsense.
These guys are not looking out for us.
-— Are there any inmates he hasnt starved to death?
No, all are dead.
“The Tax bill Trump signed into law last year is has a sunset date.”
I agree, sort of.
I actually meant only laws for which people can be prosecuted, and certain special budget items, written into law, that have some immediate “project” kind of purpose - like many Obama era “stimulus” programs that was ONLY supposedly set to temporarily stimulate the economy, but under Pelosi et al became fixed in the budgets of the departments the “temporary” items were to be funded under. The TIGER grant that helped fund the bridge that just collapsed is one grant program that should have expired when the recession following the 2008 financial crisis officially ended. Instead that grant program and the funding for it was made a permanent budget item that Congress must proactively end.
I agree, tax “law” should not have sunset provisions. Why do they? Because of stupid “law” Congress imposed on itself which demands tax changes, as far as their effects on revenue, MUST appeal to a multiyear projection. Well that “must” works both ways. Congress uses that “must” to mean “can be ‘not increasing the deficit’ when looked at all the way out to the end of that multiyear period”. So the Sunset provision became necessary - in the recent case - because without it the Congressional budget office projected deficits too large. By it not being permanent, the Congressional budget office could project higher deficits in the earlier years being made up in the years after the tax change is set to expire.
Another dumb feature of the legal demands on budgeting, are tax loopholes that are sometimes created, but with sunset provisions predicated on the long term budget projection demands I just outlined. Then, because some of those loopholes are so popular the sunset provision on them is a de facto fiction - it is a given Congress is going to renew them (with a new sunset deadline) because the Congress critters are looking at their reelection as a bigger priority than budget deficits.
Congress should look at the history of the Congressional budget office budget projections and realize they are neither good at knowing the state of the economy ten years out, nor at predicting financial behavior of people and companies in response to tax changes. They should not Sunset tax changes, just take a wait and see attitude from which they can choose to respond at will to actual conditions.
Yes criminal things like drug laws, for example, need to have sunset provisions, so Congress must weigh their effectiveness and continued appropriateness, not just rubber stamp them as “working” when many such laws have intended objectives they do no always achieve. NO, arrests for a law does not mean it’s working. The objectives of laws regarding actual crime must have hoped for deterrence as part of the objective. For instance drug laws related to sale and manufacture could be said to have worked, with a record of arrests that have more or less stabilized since the 1980s (at least not seen dramatic increases). But drugs laws regarding mere possession have NOT been any real deterrent to possession, creating a class of criminals (conviction for mere possession) that has tripled since the 1980s. It can also be said that drug laws regarding possession have not greatly bled into catching more of the suppliers, for while their arrests have been stable since the 1980s, they have also not been drastically reduced. Anyone thinking the drug laws would reduce use of abusive drugs has been wrong. Had those laws had sunset provisions Congress would had to evaluate their effectiveness on a more rigorous basis.
Thank you for your clarification Wuli. That made sense.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.