I hope this is not going to be a political debate, because it's not a Republican vs. Democrate situation. It's a public officials screwing over taxpayers situation.

What is basicly going on is, in the Puget Sound area (Seattle area), parks and public pools are being shut down due to "budget cuts". After shutting down a number of parks, it was brought to the attention of the public that the parks department had hired a person at $85/hr, full-time, to oversee the park closures due to budget cuts. Here's the link to that:

http://www.seattleinsider.com/partners/kirotv/specialreports/park_consultant.html

After word was out about this, the City Council voted to have the parks department audited. But, it goes much deeper then that. City Executive, Ron Sims, was the one who approved of the hire. The person hired just happened to be the spouce of Sim's former Chief of Staff, now Deputy Mayor of Seattle.

Last night, there was a meeting with the public on which parks were next to close. You can read about how that meeting turned out here:

http://www.seattleinsider.com/partners/kirotv/specialreports/parks_hearing.html

Of course, Sims (who has also come under scruteny for using his work cell phone to make lots of personal calls, among other things) has dismissed the scruteny about this issue also. It looks like one again, the taxpayers get screwed.