Monday, June 01, 2009

I was wrong...

and I admit it and I apologize. Contrary to this entry I posted on Saturday, the City will be satisfying their pension obligation plus interest for the four fiscal years that they did not meet in the past from the AT&T Mobility settlement, reached in March. The lump sum payment of $6,125,000, as noted in the agreement quoted in the posting directly below this one is only a portion of the money that will go toward satisfying that pension debt.

As explained below, by Public Information Director Louise Whall, part of that debt will be satisfied by the back taxes of AT&T Mobility which were being held in escrow, and another portion of the approximately $10.22 million debt, including interest the City owed to the pension fund, will be satisfied by the ongoing sales tax revenue which will continue to be collected through the end of the current fiscal year, or June 30, 2009.

I'm human and don't enjoy being caught in an error any more than the next person, however, my conscience dictates that it is important to own up, to take responsibility for error.

I extend sincere apologies to the City of Springfield for making an error in my analysis about the AT&T Mobility Settlement.

I also extend sincere apologies to Vincent David Jericho because he reported on my posting, which was in error, on his program Monday morning. In addition, I apologize to all of my readers for giving them faulty facts and faulty analysis, on this issue.

I should have paid more attention to my own past reporting in this piece, where there was a discussion about the revenue stream from taxes paid by AT&T Mobility through June 30, 2009. Those taxes, had I connected my own dots, from my own reporting, should have given me another clue that the lump sum of $6,125,000 discussed in the AT&T Mobility agreement did not represent all the revenue or funds which would be paid into the pension fund as a result of the AT&T Mobility settlement agreement.

I should have paid more attention to the portion of the AT&T Mobility agreement which read:

"Further, all payments related to the Protest Cases and payments remitted "under protest" for the months of January and February 2009, plus any accrued interest on those amounts currently held by Springfield, shall be released to Springfield upon the entry of the dismissal orders in the Protest Cases as described in paragraph 1 above."


I should have waited until I had received an answer from Public Information Director Louise Whall before assuming I fully understood the issue.

The City of Springfield and its staff and employees, along with its legal department did not lose $4.1 million.

I plan to learn from this mistake and I take full responsibility for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm proud of you for standing up and taking responsibility, Jackie. That is integrity.
A liberal would have blamed it all on Matt Blunt or George Bush.
XD

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

.....The City of Springfield and its staff and employees, along with its legal department did not lose $4.1 million....

You must have got the loss number mixed up with a parking ramp number. That could happen to anyone.

I always simply say...

I'm sorry, I made a mistake, and if you have never made one,
you cannot possibly know how I feel....

Jackie Melton said...

Just a note about the deleted comment. Stormy posted the same comment twice. Apparently, he removed the duplicate comment. I did not remove it.

I didn't want anyone to get the impression I was censoring comments.

Tom Paine said...

For what it's worth, I read the same article you read and reached the same conclusion.

At the time you wrote the blog piece, based upon the only information readily available to the average citizen, you reached a logical conclusion.

I read over on LifeofJason that Louise Whall forwarded him the email she sent to you--Why did he get involved? And you "attacked" the city??? Why is he worried about you? I sometimes think he is just a parrot.

At any rate, it is interesting to note the City is watching you as closely as you are watching them.

btw---LOJ's interview with Burris went through some revisions over the weekend. When first published, Burris, who said one of his three priorities to get to know all the city employees, got the PIO's name wrong. One would think that that would be one name he would know.

It's either that or LOJ made a mistake.

tom said...

Own up to your mistakes, at least you have were still waiting on Tom Finnie to own up to his.

Anonymous said...

Who made LOJ the blog police? Love him, but he's not always right either.

For someone that dislikes the NL so much he sure quotes them and A LOT.

Next time just put something like the police and fire pension fund has lost a shit load of money!

Just keep goin' and know that you both are making a difference.

Anonymous said...

Spell check for above ...

....Next time just put something like the police and fire pension fund has lost a "ship load"
of money!

Be patient, the City should lose money on something else yet this week I would assume.