In addressing the dozens of subcontractors present Tuesday at the town hall meeting concerning Moody AFB’s privatized housing woes, Mayor John Fretti referred to the debacle as “a very disturbing event. It feels like a crime has been committed.”

Interesting. You often hear the term “victimless crime” but in this case, it’s apparently a “criminal-less” crime. There are victims aplenty, dozens of subcontractors out more than $10 million from work they performed on more than 100 houses at the Magnolia Grove military housing project. And yet Carabetta Construction and Shaw Infrastructure dba American Eagle Communities dba Moody Family Housing were supposedly paid more than $40 million. Quite a heist.

The subcontractors are all from the Lowndes County area, so that $10 million was taken from our economy, hurting businesses and families, forcing at least one bankruptcy, and causing a tremendous amount of ill will towards the Air Force. And yet, there is apparently no one to blame. No one at fault. Can’t quite figure that one out.

According to his introduction, the Undersecretary of the Air Force, Bill Anderson, has plenty of corporate litigation experience. It was his job to answer questions Tuesday, and he handled it well. If deftly sidestepping were an art, he would be a master.

Despite direct questioning several times from subcontractors in the audience, and despite taking personal responsibility for resolving the issue, Anderson perpetuated the “Air Force is not to blame” theory. One subcontractor said “the government initiated this project, the government had a military inspector on-site every single day, and the ownership of the project will revert back to the Air Force at the end of the contract, so how again is the Air Force not responsible?”

Anderson stated that since the Air Force contracted in the civilian corporate sector, and the civilians will make all the money off the housing and the Air Force won’t collect any money or make a profit from it, they have no culpability. Wow. Let’s see the Air Force use that defense the next time a private-sector made military aircraft crashes. Congress will surely deem them not culpable, right?

The two hour question session yielded no more answers than anyone had going in. The most credible and most informative of the group was local attorney Wyn Miller, who at least was able to explain to the subcontractors that the bondholders and the bank will most likely get all their money, but the subs won’t. Finally, someone with the nerve to tell the truth, as ugly a truth as it may be.

With more plots and subplots here than in an episode of ‘The Sopranos,’ the housing issue will not be resolved, even in the best case scenario, for at least six more months. And when it’s built, it will be a much smaller project than it started out to be six years ago.

The undersecretary may be correct in stating that the Air Force isn’t legally responsible for the crime perpetuated on this community, but that doesn’t absolve them of guilt.

As Anderson said many times Tuesday, “The Air Force has learned a lot of valuable lessons from this experience.” One small voice in the back of Mathis Auditorium summed it up for the subcontractors present.. “Yeah. At our expense.”