Maybe The City Of Greensboro Just Doesn't Want Us To Know

As Roch Smith Jr reported in City of Greensboro spent over $147,000 with Amazon last year; unable to report what for there seems to be yet another problem with accountability on the part of the City of Greensboro. This isn't the first time. Last year I pointed out that over $4 Million Dollars and possibly as much as $8 Million Dollars of funding designated for the South Elm Street Redevelopment Project was never accounted for.

Roch writes and documents:

"The records show that the payments were made to a variety of Amazon entities, including Amazon.com, Amazon Marketplace and AmazonPrime Membership. The majority of these payments were made through “p-cards” — short for purchase card, which is a type of debit card the city issues to some employees who need an easy way to make city-related purchases.

What, then, were these purchases from Amazon for, specifically?

In reply to the ILSR’s request, the city told ILSR that it is “unable to run a report that captures descriptive information regarding the items purchased.” All the city supplied was the date, amount and vendor name; not a description of the item or service purchased."

I find that unable part to be rather interesting and here is why. I logged into my own Amazon account, clicked on Orders, and then chose the year 2014 to get the screen grab of my Amazon purchases from 2014. My records go back to 2010. You can do the same with your Amazon account if you have one.

Which brings us to the question: Is it that the City of Greensboro is unable to tell us what has been purchased from Amazon or is it that the City of Greensboro doesn't want us to know what they are buying from Amazon?