Monkey Business Report: Pat McElraft and ‘technical corrections’
We told you earlier about the honorables on Jones Street tossing around $700K of our money in a quite care-free fashion with little to no strings attached. At first, it looked like senator Harry Brown (R-Onslow) was the ringleader here. After all, he was the primary sponsor of the ‘technical corrections bill.’
Well, after that post ran, we heard from several folks on and around Jones Street (including some folks who have voting and floor privileges) . The real culprit behind the snatching of $700K from the Town of Cedar Point and redistributing it to a bunch of other locales was actually Rep. Pat McElraft (R-Emerald Isle).
Here’s the amendment, submitted on December 6 under her name, containing the language that showed up in the final bill. The amendment was approved 76-14. (It appears the “downtown revitalization or any other purpose” language was apparently added later.)
The crazy part of it? Her amendment took money away from a community in her district. But some other communities in Carteret and Jones counties — also represented by McElraft — got taken care of.
Some of these communities may have honest needs. But it is problematic to see five and six-figures thrown around to multiple recipients with little to no restrictions on how the money is to be used.
This was also an abuse of a process meant to correct spelling, grammar and other typographical errors in legislation that was passed earlier in the session.
The communities in her district that got the money were hard hit by Hurricane Florence while the town the money came from was not. If this was a hurricane relief measure, it would have been better to spell that out instead of using the technical corrections process.