Earmarks on legislation, money specifically set aside by federal legislators, are normally the kind of maneuvers that make a person roll their eyes. Let's face it, earmarks definitely have a bad rap. Everybody remembers the “bridge to nowhere” right? This year, maybe, just maybe, we will be willing to stop rolling our eyes-all the better to avoid the proverbial looking of the gift horse in the mouth-and grab our earmark from the feds with both hands. Why look away this year? Because Newberry County is potentially receiving a big chunk of financial help to deal with the Sheriff's Office relocation.

Goodness knows we could use it. The federal money set aside through the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill, it just awaits signature by the President at this point, comes to a little more than $700,000 and is not enough for a new facility. The Highway 219 location cost more than $1 million, and it surely didn't last. However, a surplus of projects has left the county cutting it close to the bone on how much more can be borrowed. And frankly, it is still up in the air how continued borrowing for building to house the deputies would sit with voters while the dilemma with the Highway 219 building still sits unresolved. It's not the fault of those that work in the Sheriff's Office at all. But the reality is that it has been much easier for citizens to swallow leaving them in temporary quarters and postponing a decision, versus the alternative of putting out more money to either build a new building or renovate.

So in the same sense that we deplore paying so much of our paychecks into federal assistance programs, yet grudgingly go down to get into the unemployment line if necessary-we'll take the help. Because, just like in the case of the unemployment line, help is all it is. This earmark will not foot the whole bill. Together we have made this mess and together we will have to extract ourselves; with whatever that includes, be it lawsuits against contractors or borrowing or some combination thereof. But thankfully for the folks that work inside the trailers at the Sheriff's Office; solving the mess may have just gotten a whole lot easier to swallow.