John Oliver checks out the bizarre and often overlooked area of special districts, which spend more tax dollars than all city governments combined – over $100 Billion dollars, yet few of us know they even exist. Special districts are easy to create, almost impossible to dismantle and operate without oversight. It sounds like the perfect growing soil for corruption, and it is! If you’re like me, you may assume that someone is overseeing the agencies that collect big tax dollars and we’d both be be wrong.
So certain are districts of their ability to operated without oversight, a Kentucky auditor asked that district information be made public and he was met more – or or less with with ‘meh.’ Said one: “This contains information the public is not entitled to know.” A second refused saying; “There are too many crackpots in the world,” and a third replied;” We’d just rather the public contact us directly so we know who’s asking.”
Gosh.