“If you was to make a real strike, you couldn’t be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death would keep you from trying to add $10,000 more. Ten, you’d want to get twenty-five; twenty-five you’d want to get fifty; fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know. Always one more.”
– Howard (played by the great Walter Houston ) in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
To a gold miner, enough is never enough. In the same way, the $100,000+ salary Velda Jones-Potter brings in as the state’s Treasurer must not be enough. That’s why she continues to moonlight as a “consultant” making $150 an hour for the city of Wilmington, even though it looks bad from all angles.
The News Journal ran an editorial making this very point:
Has she no concept of public perception on conflict, greed or double-dipping into government funds? (Even if she performed her consulting on a day off from her treasurer duties, she was receiving vacation pay from the state, unless she demanded a day off with no pay, which is doubtful.)
BTW- The money for the consulting gig is approved through the city’s operating budget, which is voted on by the same city council her husband sits on. Convenient.
As noted here by Unstable Isotope, her response to all of this is pretty weak:
Jones-Potter said she thinks someone sympathetic to Chip Flowers, her opponent in next month’s Democratic primary, leaked the news of the contract.
Of course Velda isn’t talking about this much, especially with a primary coming up. Which reminds me of another quote from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre:
“Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”