Special Report: In tiny N.C. towns, taxes do little more than prop up the government itself
In too many places, a striking share of what taxpayers pay goes to administration — not the kinds of services people assume they’re buying.
Speed, N.C., is a place you’ve probably never been to. Heck, you’ve probably never even heard of it. But you’ve almost certainly lived some version of what the state auditor just found there.
The tiny Edgecombe County town made headlines last week when the Office of the State Auditor released a report detailing severe financial problems.
The glaring one: Scammers got a hold of the town’s bank account information and made dozens of purchases at Walmart.com, spending thousands of dollars on gift cards, groceries, and electronics.
Nobody caught it for months.
This isn’t really a matter of the people of Speed being corrupt or careless. The town has a population of just 63 people. With a mayor, five commissioners, and a constable, that means 11% of the town’s population is a public official.
At this kind of scale, the basic guardrails of government stop working. The processes and oversight that catch problems in a normal town don’t reliably exist. That’s where my questions turned from curiosi…