Kudos to Clayton BOE

Finally, there is some good news from the Clayton Board of Education. From the Clayton News-Daily:

In a 9-0 vote Monday, the Clayton County Board of Education turned down the school system's $13.79 million share of the federal government's economic stimulus package, because the district does not have the funds to repay the money.

Accepting the Qualified School Construction Bonds allocation -- which is essentially a no-interest loan to the school district -- would mean the system would have to go into debt. Clayton Schools did not include a provision in 2004's Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST III) to account for such a situation, and does not have the money elsewhere to pay off the bonds, according to Chief Operations Officer Cephus Jackson.

The school system has not been in debt since 1997, Jackson said. "Had we had the ability to incur debt, we could have used these bonds, but our current SPLOST does not allow us to do that," he told the school board members.

Props for showing some integrity, following the rules and not pulling some ACORNesque bamboozle to score the cash. Imagine the example you're setting for the children...

In other Clayton news,

• Jonesboro hires an interim police chief. Hopefully, someone will cover the dress code with him before his first day on the job.
  
• Rep. David Scott is crowing about more that $2.5 million in energy stimulus money for Clayton County. Scott's only caveat is the money be spent quickly. What happened to spent well? Or spent fairly? Or ...
  
• C-TRAN may run out of money before summer 2010. It is run under contract by MARTA. Extrapolate amongst yourselves.
  
• The Clayton News-Daily publisher, Triple Media Inc., has filed for bankruptcy. Funny, the online edition doesn't mention it. Maybe it's just not newsworthy?