Two things became abundantly clear from Thursday's city commission meeting on expenditures by Convention and Visitor Development under control of the Greater Marshall Chamber of Commerce.

The first is that citizens are never going to know with certainty the expenditures of roughly $40,000 in tax money through the CVD. That will not be known because invoices and receipts are not available.

Like City Secretary Lisa Agnor, it is our guess that no purposeful wrong-doing has taken place here. Like Ms. Agnor, our assessment is no more than an educated guess. That has also been our stated position from the beginning of the reporting. This isn't criminal, it is just sloppy, though we suppose at some point even mere sloppiness could cross some boundary into violating the law. Again, we don't think that happened here.

Regardless, the people's money deserves much better treatment than “sloppy.” We were greatly heartened to hear that, in the last year at least, this trend has reversed itself. We would hope that continues both for the benefit of the CVD and the chamber of commerce.