Chapter Two
The Rooms Behind the Rooms
There were committees for improvement. Boards for development. Authorities for redevelopment. Friends of foundations. Foundations of friends. Civic circles. Advisory panels. Task forces. Study groups. Working groups. Subcommittees that studied what the committees had already studied.
Every group had a purpose.
Mostly, that purpose was to make one simple thing look too complicated for ordinary people to question.
Money entered these rooms as taxpayer dollars and came out wearing a nice suit with the word “progress” pinned to its lapel.
A street project became a phase. A phase became a study. A study became a consulting agreement. A consulting agreement became an amendment. An amendment became an emergency. An emergency became a no-bid situation.
A no-bid situation became, by pure civic miracle, a check made payable to someone whose truck had been parked in Silas Threadwell’s driveway the week before.
Nobody called it corruption.
That word had sharp edges.
They called it “economic development.”
Silas loved economic development because it could mean almost anything. A sidewalk. A sign. A parking lot. A field. A building nobody asked for. A plan nobody read. A promise nobody tracked.
If anyone asked too many questions, Silas’s people explained that they simply did not understand the long-term vision.
The long-term vision was always very long.
Long enough that nobody could measure it. Long enough that today’s spending could be blamed on tomorrow’s opportunity. Long enough that by the time the bill came due, the people who approved it had either retired, changed seats, changed stories, or discovered a sudden passion for spending more time with family.
Silas had a saying.
“Take care of the town, and the town takes care of you.”
It sounded noble, provided you did not ask which part of the town kept getting taken care of first.
