The Star's editorial board is looking at last week's report out of Oxford, whose financial outlook may be extremely bright because a significant expected budget surplus:
Residents should require that Oxford use its money in a progressive, ambitious manner; Oxford’s financial security gives it an advantage most cities of its size do not enjoy. And any good businessman knows he must upgrade and pump a portion of his profits back into his business. In this sense, Oxford’s City Hall is just that, a business — a business with the financial wherewithal to avoid stagnation.
Also, The Star again is examining the need for a separate board of education for the two-year college system and the cleaning of the corruption that exists there:
There also is the recently reported matter of a person with political connections who was paid by different two-year colleges to work in the office of Govs. Don Siegelman and (briefly) Bob Riley, and later for U.S. Rep. Artur Davis.
It is a twisted web with college presidents signing off on an arrangement which clearly should have been nipped in the bud. But without a chancellor willing to nip it —indeed, records show that the previous chancellor actually approved the arrangement — and a board with the time and inclination to keep track of this sort of thing, money that should have been spent on the respective campuses was spent for lobbying and political contacts.
