Same criminal behavior, different town

Recently reported in the LATimes, a judge questions the criminality of a police chief's nontransparent and superinflated salary, sounding striking familiar to comments posted here about our own loyal public servants.

Read below:

"Judge questions why Bell's former police chief isn't facing corruption charges"
By Jeff Gottlieb, Los Angeles Times

4:38 PM PST, December 19, 2011

"From the day authorities handcuffed and led away eight Bell administrators and politicians in a massive public corruption case, people in this small working-class town have wondered why it wasn't the Bell 9 instead.

Missing in the line-up of defendants — from city administrator Robert Rizzo to the pastor who said his lavish paycheck for serving on the City Council was a gift from God — was the town's police chief.

For running the city's 46-person Police Department, Randy Adams made more than the Los Angeles police chief or the Los Angeles County sheriff. His contract, prosecutors said, was drawn up so that citizens would be unable to learn the real size of his paycheck.

Now, the judge who is hearing the case against the Bell 8 is also questioning why Adams is not facing criminal charges along with Rizzo, his chief assistant and six former City Council members accused of draining the city's budget with oversized salaries and benefit packages."

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bell-adams-20111220,0,4709254.story

latimes.com
Emphasis in text added.

Today, Opaque Equals Scandal

Excerpt from recent Economist article:

...the real push for transparency has come from the scandals that often breed in opaque government. The most notorious example, uncovered last year, is Bell, a tiny blue-collar city near Los Angeles, whose leaders paid themselves exorbitant amounts and, in effect, used the city coffers as personal banks."

The article goes on to admit that today's technology has made putting government data online easier. I would go further to say that today's technology makes putting data online so easy that a government really has to put more effort into NOT putting the data online. That entity really has to contort themselves, their reasoning, and their decision to NOT publish, into some really convoluted and shallow positions. Further, given that a government entity has a responsibility to be transparent, its decisions to NOT publish data online strongly suggests ethics lapses and even criminal activity.

And given that American citizens have a duty to hold their representative and democratic government accountable, there should be no tolerance for Board or council members who do not know the true or factual details of their governing body's finances. Virginia Minnich, do you know what the Borough's liability will be for Bill Care's retirement annuity? Did you know that he will receive more than a career, top-level and distinguished, Central Intelligence Administration officer? Charles Allwein, do you know that the Borough's "real" budget is around $600,000 each year?

Municipalities all over this nation are using their websites to provide as much data as possible, and the world has not ended for any of them. For example, residents of Alberquerque, NM, are even able to follow their mayor's expense charges and their government staffs' earnings. Vendor contracts, expense reports, salaries and benefits--its all there for the taxpayer and constituent to follow--as it should be in a country, commonwealth, and community that is founded on transparency and accountability, and that has nothing to hide.


*excerpt from The Economist, Nov. 19th, 2011, page 36.