We had hoped the new Brookhaven Board of Aldermen, which tookover the reins of city operation Tuesday night, would take earlysteps to clear up a leftover controversy from the recent election.Unfortunately, they did not.

As you recall, while most city races went smoothly, the mayor’srace was overshadowed with controversy in the final weeks. Theleftover issue involves the city’s procedure for travel expensereimbursement, and questions raised by opponents of Mayor BillGodbold about the amount of mileage, hotel lodging and mealreimbursements paid to the mayor.

We still believe that questions raised by former Aldermen JohnRoberts and Henry Newman about the mayor’s mileage and travelallowance are serious ones. Documentation we have seen does showexcessive travel and lots of trips to the Mississippi GulfCoast.

City taxpayers, who ultimately pick up the tab for any travel bycity officials, deserve to know what is going on with this issuenow and how it will be resolved.

No one on the new board, it seems, is willing to ‘take the bullby horns’ when it comes to travel expense. The subject was notmentioned at the meeting Tuesday.

The questions must be answered.

Again, we urge the new board to review the city’s expensereimbursement policy.

Again, we urge them to go one step further and ask the StateAudit Department to audit the previous board’s expenditures.

Again, we urge them to make resolving this issue a toppriority.

It certainly should not be left to become campaign fodder againin four years.