A Bill for Five Cents?

Have you ever received a bill for five cents? In this era of computer generated invoices, perhaps many of us have received bills for amounts less than the postage required to post the invoice. Ideally, someone in billing catches these invoices and writes off the small amounts, but that's not always a given.

Apparently the Lauderdale County Commission either received an invoice for a few pennies or underpaid a previous bill by five cents. For whatever reason, in April the Commission cut a check from the General Fund for five cents--and then presumably mailed it. What's wrong with this picture?

We may not be able to count on large companies vetting their bills in search of such piddling amounts; however, we should be able to assume our Commission and its staff are on the lookout for such items. The official minutes of the meeting do not list the vendor to whom the check was cut, so of course the invoice may have been from a company thousands of miles away. If not, a simple local phone call would have been in order. We're sure the vendor would have been happy to have written off the small amount, and the Lauderdale County Commission would not have appeared so inept.


What's up with this: State Rep. Roger Bedford recently commented on Gov. Riley, "He's got misplaced priorities." Hmmm, obviously correct grammar isn't one of Bedford's.