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It's a simple question. How, police chief, did you spend the money?

The fumbled answer - and its implications - have one city councilman fuming.

Two weeks ago, the Greensboro City Council voted unanimously to put $83,000 toward the police department's robbery suppression squad for one more month of operation.

The temporary squad had been funded, in part, by $500,000 that the council gave the department in December to combat a bump in crime. Police Chief Tim Bellamy told the council that money had run out and the special unit would not be included in the department's new budget, which started July 1.

Council members voted unanimously to continue the special unit for another month, until they could receive a consultant's review that might tell them whether the robbery suppression squad was a necessary expenditure.

In the meantime, Councilman Zack Matheny asked the chief to explain exactly how the $500,000 had been spent.

Matheny didn't like the answer.

On June 27, the department sent a memo to the City Council stating the police would have spent an estimated $333,000 on the robbery unit and some other expenses by the end of June.

After phone calls from Scoop and Matheny questioning why the full $500,000 hadn't been spent by the police department, the city issued a second memo correcting the first memo.

The first memo didn't totally account for a few things, said Deputy City Manager Bob Morgan. The second memo said that the police department would have spent $459,000 of the council's special appropriation by the end of the fiscal year, June 30.

The memos and their contents left Matheny feeling "underwhelmed."

If the department hadn't spent all of the first $500,000 the council allocated, then why did the special unit need an additional $83,000 for one more month of operation, he wondered.

Matheny said the expenditure needs to be revisited.

"This is not an open-pocketbook council," he said. "That is not right. People need to be held accountable for their memos and their budgets."

No dice

The state House is due to vote on a bill, which has been expedited past the normal processes, that would outlaw video sweepstakes terminals that play like slot machines and can be found throughout the Triad in gas stations, bars and the like.

Although they look a lot like the video poker machines that lawmakers banned two years ago, they operate legally, thanks to a loophole - that seems destined for closure - in the law.

It was gently suggested to Scoop that lawmakers were acting so quickly to protect the state's own gambling enterprise: the lottery. Not so, lottery officials say.

"We were not involved in the bill. We didn't even know about it," said Alice Garland, a lobbyist for the lottery.

Garland said the lottery has not studied if or how much money the lottery might lose to video slots and pointed out that sales of lottery tickets jumped last year to $1.087 billion.

"We're aware of these games, but we just haven't gotten involved at all," she continued. "Our focus is on increasing our own sales."

Reading up

We at Scoop know that North Carolina politics can be a curse-riddled, rough-and-tumble affair. And you, Scoop Reader, know that, too.

Well, our ink-stained brethren just east of us - Rob Christiansen, the longtime political reporter for Raleigh's News & Observer - has captured all that in his new book, "The Paradox of Tar Heel Politics: The Personalities, Elections and Events That Shaped Modern North Carolina.''

He will talk about his book at 7 p.m. July 17 at Barnes & Noble in Greensboro's Friendly Shopping Center.

Christiansen spent a decade researching and writing "Tar Heel Politics.'' And after all that work, he boils down the birth of our state's modern political landscape to one particular day: Nov. 8, 1898.

That day, outside Hamlet, our Republican governor, Daniel Russell, hid in the baggage compartment of a train when he heard protesters yell, "Lynch him! Lynch the fat (expletive)!''

Use your imagination. You'll figure out what they said. It's a b-word, five letters. That incident would echo, sort of, in Christiansen's own career when state GOP leaders removed him from a party convention, called him the b-word - seven-letter version - and left him with this message as he was led out.

"The cancer has been surgically removed.''

Gimme a scoop of that

Farmer's market aficionado and Guilford County Commissioner John Parks made it out to the 4-H churn-off on June 28 at the Piedmont Triad Farmer's Market.

But mid-90s temps made entries more milkshakey than scoopable.

"A lot of the ice cream had turned into a liquid form," Parks said.

The winner? A Cheerwine sherbet that stayed solid.

If you're looking for Parks' vote at future churn-offs, go with vanilla.

"Because it can go with so many things," he said, planning his next snack - a scoop with some fresh blueberries from the market.

Vanilla is not unlike Parks' presence on the board. He's rarely found in the fray that makes other commissioners appear to prefer a big ol' scoop of rocky road.

Staff writers Mark Binker, Amanda Lehmert, Jeri Rowe and Gerald Witt contributed. Get the Scoop online: http://blog.news-record.com/staff/scoopblog/