Pay to write it, pay Corps to read it?

Let's get this straight:

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Columbia County taxpayers paid for a consultant to conduct an environmental assessment at Wildwood Park. The study is a requirement of the county's planned $28 million in improvements to the park, leased from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

But now that the assessment is complete, Columbia County taxpayers will have to fork over $20,000 just to get the corps to review it.

What a racket! Does anyone wonder why it costs so much for the government to do anything, especially when bureaucrats can force taxpayers to pay for a report, and then make the taxpayers pay them again before they'll read it?

Truth really is stranger than fiction. There's a gag in an old episode of The Simpsons in which the local government tries to get rich at the expense of a studio making a film in Springfield. When the moviemakers finally go broke from all the fees and taxes, they're then hit on the way out with a "leaving town tax."

The joke doesn't seem so funny when it's on us.