Salt Lake Telegram | 1936-02-29 | Page 4 | Controls on Spending

l v i Controls on Spending I- I SPENDING PENDING of public moneys through h W WP P A AI I S tJ does s not cover many months Spending through its predecessors C W WA A and P W A and their alphabetical cousins goes back to the be beginning be- be ginning of ma work make work e-work programs and other PER PERA A undertakings It is comforting to discover disc discover dis dis- c cover ver even ven belatedly that the city commission has has- decided to abandon the former policy of nonchalance in letting contracts and to eliminate at ate concealed liabilities private understandings gentlemen's agreements and other loose tic must have made the account books look like Chinese puzzles Finance Fiance Commissioner William Murdoch of offered offered of- of a resolution Thursday Th adopted by the city commission which will place unfinished pr projects j a and d all aU new projects under the supervision super super- vision ii 1 of the city engineering department The I ITe Te resolution itself somewhat informal and ab abstract abstract ab- ab str ct seems to mean that the city engineer will vill have haye something like a f fair ir idea of what an undertaking will cost completed before if is launched that expenditures will b be held held within the estimates and that the work will have ve te technical hn ca control The commission will willbe willbe be advised as to progress and presumably will willi l le when a job it h has s ordered is finished It l looks like Uke a right sensible idea What is not so sensible is that it was not nota a adopted opted at the very beginning If It any explanation explanation explanation tion should be forthcoming it will probably be I that h t i rush ush of work prevented What Wh t is s probably ably aIly lf nearer the truth is that no one bothered to set and like business controls control over th the spending of the of-the the e easy come easy go money H How w much waste this has caused may not be known fo for a a long time to come Just because the gr greater ater part of the money was federal funds it didn't grow on raspberry bushes The Jj bills ls will have to be paid some day either by this generation of taxpayers or their unborn progeny The commissi commissions commission's n s action may serve to tol l lighten the oad a little and little and may ay not of We Wew will ll at 81 east least know how big the bills will be Even that tha may relieve apprehension sion to a degree a The Thel commission has closed the door before b all the Horses got out of the barn earning public grat grat- lude