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Outrageous

Mind-boggling spending at the Supreme Court

We doubt that many West Virginians would have any idea where to start, if told to go out and buy a $32,000 couch. But someone at our state Supreme Court knew — and did.

During the past few weeks, truly mind-boggling expenditures at the Supreme Court have been revealed. Single pieces of furniture costing more than most people spend to outfit an entire living room, complete with wide-screen television, were purchased. An inlaid floor with a price tag high enough to cover wall-to-wall carpeting for many whole houses was installed. Some furnishings were purchased for use in court justices’ home offices.

If you pay taxes, you helped cover the bill for all this — a project to remodel court offices at the Capitol that started with an estimate of $876,000 and has exploded to $3.7 million.

Needless to say, no one wants to be the patsy for this one. Chief Justice Allen Loughry blames former court administrator Steve Canterbury. He, in turn, says Loughry and other justices knew of and approved his spending.

Let them hash that out among themselves. But clearly, spending at the court was — we hope the latter tense is accurate — out of control.

That has led some legislators to ponder what, if anything, they can do to prevent similar outrages in the future. That is a more difficult question than may appear at first.

The founders of both our nation and our state understood the need for three independent branches of government. In particular, they wanted to ensure neither the legislative nor the executive branches could control the judicial by choking off its appropriations.

So reducing the court’s budget is problematic, especially because the justices control budgets for lower courts in West Virginia.

There is a way to exercise some control, however, and it may be more effective than anything lawmakers have thought of thus far. It has the winning virtue of simplicity, too.

Why not require a detailed report of court spending be submitted, perhaps every six months? Why not further mandate it must be available to anyone who asks, including the press and members of the public? And finally, why not insist on year audits of the court’s books to ensure no one tries to hide anything?

In other words, why not remind justices and those who work for them that lavish spending cannot be conducted out of sight of the voting public? That would go a long way in reminding everyone in the court’s offices that they may not be able to get away with spending as much on a sofa as some Mountain State residents did on their houses.

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