THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511110147
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: FOCUS: ON THE STREET
SOURCE: BILL REED
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
The figures are all in.
Now we know, since the auditing firm of KPMG Peat Marwick has told us so, that the school deficit for 1994-95 is actually $12.1 million, instead of $7.4 million.
And, during a presentation before the City Council Tuesday, we learned there also was a deficit of $1.3 million for the 1993-94 budget year. Then the school system reported there could be a $6.6 million deficit for the current 1995-96 budget year and the city manager's staff has forecast a potential $8 million shortfall for the 1996-97 budget year.
The whole enchilada could eventually swell to $28 million before the counting is done.
This huge lump sum, should it prove to be that large in the long run, would have to be swallowed and digested by city taxpayers in some fashion.
They are the folks who pay the bills for all city operations in the end, no matter how the money is shuffled around. Their dollars pay for things like street cleaning, policing, firefighting and trash collecting as well as the building and staffing of city schools.
It stands to reason that the good folks of Virginia Beach who earn their pay by checking out groceries, pumping gas or twiddling computer keys in an insurance office are anxious - maybe even frothing at the mouth - to find out what really happened to their tax dollars and who was responsible for frittering them away.
As Commonwealth's Attorney Robert J. Humphreys so eloquently put it Wednesday, ``The number one issue is: What the hell happened? The public needs to know.''
Amen, Bob. The public also needs to know who the hell was responsible.
So, with these questions in mind, Humphreys has decided to smoke out the answers by asking the Circuit Court to empanel a special grand jury.
If the panel finds criminal wrongdoing in the budgeting process, it could pass the information on to a regular grand jury, which has the authority to issue indictments. And once indictments are issued, Humphreys and his staff have the authority to charge the folks responsible and try them in court. And if they find other more serious crimes have occurred and - if the moon is aligned with Mars and Jupiter is in its seventh phase - the whole kit and kaboodle could be sent to jail, which also is a tax-supported institution.
Now the beauty of a special grand jury is that those who are summoned to testify are under oath to tell the truth, something very foreign to your average bureaucrat.
And those who don't tell the truth run the risk of being cited for perjury and maybe even obstruction of justice, both criminal charges that could earn them considerable time in the pokey.
The down side to this is that the special grand jury is not empowered to summon out-of-state folks like former superintendent Sidney L. Faucette, who was in charge when the Virginia Beach school budget became derailed.
Faucette, you may recall, high-tailed it out of town earlier this year to take the school superintendent's job in Gwinett County, Ga., just as the Virginia Beach school budget balloon was about to pop.
Since then, however, Faucette has assured a newspaper reporter that he would be more than willing to return to Virginia Beach to help unravel the budget mystery, since it has become such a hot topic around office water coolers and coffee urns.
``I, as much as anyone, want to know what occurred,'' he said.
And you know at this very minute he is probably in the process of buying an airline ticket back to Virginia Beach. by CNB