Now we would be among the last to defend tax-paid travel boondoggles that all too many public officials take.
But it also find it mildly amusing to see some politicians, who take plenty of their own tax-paid travel excursions, who find fault with other politicians who want to take their own tax-paid travel boondoggles.
Last month, Graham’s city council voted, 3-2, to delete funding for the new mayor Chelsea Dickey to use $1,500 in city funds to make a trip to a conference in New Bern.
On the surface, since the vote was taken without any substantive discussion or explanation, the action appeared to be little more than a petty jab at the new mayor.
Dickey faces considerable headwinds in her new role. She was elected by the citizens of Graham. But she’s now serving on the council with slates of council members who were aligned with the former mayor, Jennifer Talley, whom she beat last November.
In 2025, Talley’s slate, such as it could be identified, consisted of Bobby Chin and Jim Young, both of whom won.
In 2023, Talley’s allies were Ricky Hall and Bonnie Whitaker, both of whom won and are scheduled to serve until 2027.
The surprise in last year’s election, however, was that while Talley’s council selections prevailed, she did not.
So Dickey is now presiding over meetings at which the real power appears to rest with the “old guard” of Talley’s allies.
Why did council veto Dickey’s trip?
When we followed up to ask Chin why he had singled out Dickey’s $1,500 trip, Chin offered up what we considered to be a pretty reasonable explanation.
Dickey wanted to attend a conference sponsored by the North Carolina Main Street program, a government-run bureaucracy that purports to provide “downtown strategic economic development planning and project-specific technical assistance to communities in the Main Street program” across the state, to quote their own self-assessment.
Supposedly, the Main Street program builds “local capacity for downtown revitalization, small business development, and rehabilitation of historic properties.”
Chin accurately observed, however, that Graham already has a vibrant downtown, complete with lots of historic preservation. Therefore, he said Graham doesn’t need any help from a government program that, inevitably, will want financial contributions from Graham’s taxpayers. (They usually also want specific bureaucrats to run the program.)
We have to concur with Chin’s summary assessment.
We do think Chin should have offered that explanation publicly while stripping Graham tax funds from Dickey’s planned excursion.
But other council members’ trips are equally dubious
But we have to question, equally, the decisions of Chin and other council members, who seem to have no shortage of justification in making their own trips, at taxpayer expense, for purposes which we consider to be equally frivolous and unnecessary.
We think it is little more than a vacation to have local officials traipsing off to Wrightsville Beach each fall for a several-day “retreat,” sponsored by (but needless to say, not paid for by) the Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce. Couldn’t they meet locally? That wouldn’t cost taxpayers of any local jurisdiction anything.
Of course, what’s a few days at the beach each fall? Well, about $700 per official, based on Graham council participation – attended last fall by then-mayor Talley, Chin, and Hall. Chin, Hall, and Whitaker attended the 2024 and 2023 chamber beach meetings. [We’re working on a more comprehensive tally of council travel excursions and expenses, but those are some of the most expensive over the past three years.]
Similarly, Graham’s council members appear to have a fondness for anything sponsored by the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
Four council members (Chin, Hall, Whitaker, and Young) are going to a dinner sponsored by the League in Greensboro later this month.
We find particularly galling the idea that meetings of the organization in Raleigh, barely an hour away, somehow necessitate council members to spend the night at a swanky hotel – at taxpayer expense, of course.
But that’s what four council members – Chin, mayor Dickey, Hall, and Young – apparently plan to do (based on emails and texts the newspaper has reviewed thus far), with Chin and Hall bringing their wives in tow, for a multi-day League conference in Raleigh in May.
Is it too much of an imposition to drive to and from the event, rather than putting their hotel tab on the taxpayers of Graham?
That’s if it’s even that worthwhile to attend in the first place.
The Raleigh confab, for instance, is described on the organization’s website: “You won’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with hundreds of municipal leaders and local government partners during 3 days of educational sessions, networking events, and exploring all that the capital city has to offer!”
Excuse us, but we don’t think taxpayers need to pay for “networking” by Graham council members or having them touring Raleigh. And we frankly don’t care whether they connect with, or meet, other council members from other cities.
Our impression of most of these events is it’s simply a way for government officials to find out the most outrageous ideas from other cities so that they can bring them back home.
We’ve noted over the years an almost total lack of any seminars, speakers, or other programs designed with the theme of “saving taxpayer dollars.”
We guess the other dimension of all this tax-funded travel that is so infuriating is to have to endure the self-serving lecturettes about what conscientious stewards the council members claim to be of Graham’s finances – especially while simultaneously taking these trips at taxpayer expense and planning a property tax increase on their residents [see separate editorial in this edition (above)].
