Rusty McMahon: Enough Already!


At its recent annual awards banquet, the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments (COG) chose Archie B. Taylor as its Vance county elected official of the year.

COG officials praised Taylor’s leadership vision, his hands on approach, and his economic development success since becoming a commissioner. Tommy Hester bragged about Taylor’s having been a catalyst for the expansion of two local companies. Truth is, giving our hard earned tax dollars to companies that were going to expand here anyway is nothing to brag about. Any schmoe can be bluffed, can be rolled, and can pay bribes with other peoples’ money.

Under Taylor’s leadership, our convicted embezzler was able to continue her felonious ways in plain sight for years, the water system is ready for hospice, and we’re drowning at the bottom of the economic barrel. We’re still 94th out of 100 counties.

Back to the award. Who better to recognize failure than the experts at the Kerr-Tar COG? They know failure when they see it. They haven’t thrown an economic development strike in decades. For years they have brought us failing project after failing project. They are the group that illegally misspent federal money a couple of years ago and begged us to cough up more money so their directors wouldn’t face criminal charges. Their economic development ability and their integrity are on display for all to see.

In fairness, all the credit for our stellar economic performance shouldn’t go to Taylor alone. It takes an entire commission of schmoes to fail this spectacularly.

We should be thankful, though. Were it not for our commissioners’ visionary leadership and economic development prowess, we might have slipped to 95th.

Just how much more of this success can we afford?