The council rag and creative accounting

Hat tip to Cneifiwr for publishing the latest press release from Plaid's Rhodri Glyn Thomas. Carmarthenshire's AM accuses the council of creative accounting over the propaganda sheet, the Carmarthenshire News. I mentioned this in my previous post including the fact that it does not appear anywhere in the council's accounts, a theme common with everything else that might be considered a controversial use of public money.

Mr Thomas said;

“My concern is extremely simple – The County Council says it receives £18,000 in advertising and sponsorship revenue per edition but it has since told me it cannot distinguish between adverts that are paid for internally and externally.  The county newspaper is loaded with adverts which the local authority itself provides.  So how much of that £18,000 is from coming within the council’s taxpayer-funded budgets?
 “The Council has also told me it would be impossible to look back to previous years and assess the costs of internal adverts as it would involve going through every edition.  Sadly the Council has not kept a copy of them.  Either the Council doesn’t want to admit how much of taxpayers’ money is actually being put into these publications or it has serious problems with its financial management.
 “The County Council could be paying anything up to £23,000 for each edition - that's up to £138,000 a year.  For it to suggest the net cost to the taxpayer is just £5,000 per edition is disingenuous and smacks of creative accountancy"
(See full statement on Cneifiwr's blog)

With the recent accusations of blackmail and acting like a dictatorship, it looks like the gloves are off between our local AM and MP and the council. I hope they keep it up.