\nThe VDT article quotes Col. Allan Ricketts as saying:\n
\n\u201cThese costs included renting the center and providing refreshments. We\nview these costs as due diligence because they relate directly to our\ncommunity. We need to make sure that a project is a good fit for our\ncommunity and that it won\u2019t do harm to our community,\u201d said Ricketts.\n\n\u201cYou would want to insure that you going provide the best information\navailable – they are the most qualified professionals you can\nfind. You\u2019d expect to pay them and they expect to be paid for their\nservices.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nIf they were so qualified, why wasn’t the VLCIA willing to have\nlocal people who would have charged nothing sit on the panel and debate\nthem?\nPerhaps it’s because so many of the paid experts’ points\nwere so easy to refute, as we know because so many of them have\nsince been amply refuted?\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Rodock writes in the VDT, Report on funds spent by Industrial Authority during biomass conference: An open records request led to the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA) publicly releasing the detailed costs associated with hosting a panel discussion to answer questions about the Wiregrass biomass plant at the Rainwater Conference Center on Dec. 6, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,120,14,15,16,21,32,133,178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-biomass","category-economy","category-education","category-environment","category-planning","category-pollution","category-vdt","category-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-C8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/jkRwS3ucqe8\/default.jpg\n\")
<\/a>\nDavid Rodock writes in the VDT,\n