For far too long, the goal of making things appear to be working just fine in the Town of Vidalia apparently outweighed common sense.

Vidalia’s new administration has its hands full working to shore up what appears to be overspending and poor decision-making on the part of the town’s former leaders.

In the latest layer of the onion that is being skinned, the public learned the town has been paying a note on an economic development incentive that apparently never lived up to the promise of the business the incentive benefited.

This week the Town of Vidalia took the matter to court, filing a lawsuit against Louisiana Elastomer LLC, a tire recycling operation that first opened in 2009.

At the inception, the town agreed to partner with the business to receive a $700,000 grant from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality to help pay for the construction of the plant.

In return the company was to recycle a specified volume of waste tires, helping the state repurpose those tires rather than have them wind up in a landfill or piled up somewhere.

The lawsuit alleges the original requirements were not met, nor were the greatly reduced volumes later agreed upon.

In 2013 the state decided the funds needed to be repaid. Apparently for nearly two years, the Town of Vidalia has been writing a $15,555 check each month to cover the repayment.

The lawsuit aims to recoup those funds and the remaining due on the grant repayment.

Clearly, new Vidalia Mayor Buz Craft and the mostly new board of aldermen are finding out that getting to the bottom of the financial mess may be more difficult than they ever dreamed. We applaud their courage in taking the tough action of going to court to fight for fairness in dealing with public money.