Pam's Points: Watching tax dollars from the library to the capitol

photo Library assistant Jessica Meyer helps Ani Harsha, 9, use a 3-D printer in the public library.

A dollar here, dollar there

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't quite understand what "presence" the Chattanooga Public Library needs "worldwide." Especially since only residents of Chattanooga and Hamilton County public school students -- not adults from Hamilton County or other nearby areas -- have "free" full-access library cards. Local users who live outside the city pay $50 a year to use the library.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who is perplexed. Chattanooga City Auditor Stan Sewell's audit report has found that three library officials received nearly $3,000 in excess reimbursements for national and worldwide trips to promote the library. Two employees were reported to the state for possible fraud, according to the auditor. Also, the library director, Corinne Hill, was doubly reimbursed for a trip to Denmark and overpaid $972. She said the money has been repaid.

But the real question is why we're promoting the Chattanooga Library anywhere outside of library driving distance.

Someone in the audience at a recent library board meeting was apparently wondering the same thing, asking whether Hill's trips to international conferences were excessive and whether they directly helped the library, according to a Saturday story by Times Free Press reporter Joy Lukachick.

"Board Chairman James Kennedy defended the trips, saying they have increased the Chattanooga Library's presence worldwide," according to Lukachick's story.

Yes, it's cool that the library's previously unused fourth floor is now said to be a "creative hub" with 3-D printers, laser cutters and a "zine lab" for independent publishing. Of course, local folks can only visit this famed fourth floor on Monday through Thursday from 2-8 pm and on Fridays from 2-6 pm. -- times when most of us are working or in school. But by-golly our library folks can brag about it in Chicago, Denmark, and well -- worldwide.

Here's a thought. Open the fourth floor on Saturdays when real Chattanoogans aren't working. And forgive me for thinking small, but I'd rather reimburse library officials for making speaking trips to Lone Oak, Birchwood, Alton Park and Rossville.

But the states are wasting big dollars

Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama threw away not just opportunities to improve health care for residents, but also $22.5 million, $33.7 million and $14.4 million, respectively, in our tax dollars to expand Medicaid in other states, according to a new analysis of data by McClatchy Newspapers and the Urban Institute.

In all, the 23 states -- most with Republican governors -- that have rejected expanding Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act will pay $152 billion (yes, billion with a b) to extend the program in other states over the next eight years, all without receiving anything in return.

Gov. Bill Haslam flushed away our money. So did Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and Alabama Gov. Robert J. Bentley. All are Republican, and all are up for re-election in November.

The ACA provides financial incentives for states to extend Medicaid coverage to adults who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. For example, a single person who makes $15,856 a year would qualify for TennCare in Tennessee.

If these 23 states opted now to join in, they'd still pay the $152 billion they already are spending, but they would split nearly $386 billion in federal funding from 2013 to 2022, according to Urban Institute estimates.

In other words, it will cost Tennessee an estimated $1.7 billion to expand Medicaid over that 10-year period, but the cost of not expanding will be $22.5 billion in lost federal funding plus $7.7 billion in lost hospital reimbursements.

Sherry Glied, dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, summed it up this way: "Here is money that is pretty much there for the asking, and these states are turning it down. And in the meantime, their taxpayers are paying taxes that fund expansions in states that are moving forward. It just doesn't make any sense."

It doesn't make any sense to re-elect these Republican clowns, er a -- governors, either.

Election Day is Nov. 4.

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