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You might have seen the news that the Hillsborough County Commission is investigating the county attorney, Emmy Acton. The allegations against Acton involve her work habits, her treatment of her office staff and so forth.
On second thought, that's not quite right.
The County Commission is not investigating squat.
The County Commission has swung into decisive action and ... hired a consultant.
For a bargain-basement price tag of as much as $60,000, consulting firm KPMG has already given the county a preliminary report.
The report said:
We have studied this matter carefully, and decided you need to pay us more dough.
So sure enough, this week the County Commission agreed to cough up an extra $45,000 to "finish" the investigation.
Now, listen.
Maybe Emmy Acton has been there too long, and it's time for her to go.
Or maybe the commissioners need to say, "Emmy, you gotta make some changes."
Or, they could still step up to the plate and say, "We think her legal work is great. For all we care, she can take as much time off and make her staff do any fool thing she wants."
About the only thing that doesn't sound like such a hot idea is putting $100,000 into a big pile and setting it on fire, which is more or less what they're doing.
If this bunch had been at Philadelphia in 1787, the Constitution would have been written by Post Buckley Schuh and would have run a few million over budget. Then they would have found out they used the wrong ink, and hired Halliburton to redo it.
A hundred thousand clams!
Listen. On the day that your boss thinks about firing you, do you think he or she is going to have to spend $100,000 to dither over it?
If they're tryin' to screw up their nerve to fire her, I'll do it for them. They should just hire me. I'd give them a much better deal, maybe a couple grand.
Heck, to exonerate her, I'd charge even less, maybe $500. I'd just write a letter saying: "Dear Commissioners: Leave Emmy alone! Love, Howard."
Too flippant, you say?
Not respectful of the important "process" that must be observed?
Process, schmocess. If you want a good laugh, get a copy of the KPMG report, which cost taxpayers upwards of 60,000 smackers - at billing rates of as much as $460 an hour. Somebody ought to be arrested. It's the closest thing to robbery-by-verbiage you will see.
The report starts out, naturally enough, with the observation that the county wasn't paying enough to the consultants, while throwing in a couple of misspellings of the name of County Commissioner Ronda Storms. (We locals misspell her name often enough for free; it hardly seems necessary to hire smarty-pants consultants to do it.)
Okay, let's move on in the report to "Background and Scope." Here, we are reminded again that the investigation was halted when the commissioners balked at paying more money. "If KPMG is asked to complete its engagement, we reserve the right to amend these findings," the report advises.
We learn under "Methodology and Approach" that the consultants distributed a questionnaire to the 90 members of Acton's staff, and 54 people replied. (There's another "Rhonda" in there, so now we've averaging $30,000 per misspelling).
Okay, on to "Preliminary and Tentative Findings." That includes a summary of the beefs about Acton, most of which had already been in the newspaper (which cost the county maybe a quarter, even less if they subscribe).
"Since KPMG was unable to complete its engagement," the report says here, "we were unable to confirm or deny many of the examples cited by the personnel interviewed."
Then the report said some of the employees were interviewed, and said the same kind of allegations, the report says. This leads, of course, to the next repetition:
"These and other statements were made to KPMG during the interview process. However, since KPMG was unable to complete its engagement, we were unable to obtain other information to confirm or deny many of the examples cited by the personnel interviewed."
They go on to say the same thing several more times, but you get the point. Can't wait to see what the next $45,000 buys.