The Watchdog and the Water Money: Tacoma's Utility-Fund Fight
Controller Benham refuses to sign a printing contract to protect the treasury — and a taxpayer asks why the same official let $100,000 of voter-approved water money drain away from its purpose.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Tacoma, Sept. 18.—[Special.]—City Controller Benham has refused to sign the contract giving the city printing to the Morning Union, on the ground that the city has exhausted its legal limit and can incur no more debts by contract. Some think that Benham is right in making this objection; others consider it a quibble. A taxpayer sends the following to the Tacoma bureau of the Post-Intelligencer:
"Why does Controller Benham, the watch-dog of the taxpayers' money, allow the city's money to be spent in a different way than the voters authorized by their votes? The taxpayers expected, when they were forced to submit to the majority of non-taxpayers' votes which resulted in the purchase of the water plant, that the water-extension fund money would be used to extend the system as authorized. However, he has allowed $100,000 of the water and light extension fund to be drawn out of that fund already, when the taxpayers thought and were led to believe that the whole $300,000 of that fund was to be used solely in extending the plant to the Patterson and Thomas springs, or to some reliable supply of good pure water. With such acts to his record, why does he refuse to sign the city printing contract, which will be a saving of about — per cent over the former printing contract? — 'Taxpayer.'"
“Why does Controller Benham, the watch-dog of the taxpayers' money, allow the city's money to be spent in a different way than the voters authorized by their votes?”
The complaint — that money voters earmarked for clean water was quietly diverted — is the same argument ratepayers make today over utility funds and ballot measures. Then as now, the fight was not merely about who sat in City Hall but about who controlled the pipes, the plant, and the dollars pledged to them.
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