10:00 PM PST on Friday, February 26, 2010
CASSIE MACDUFF
Over the past decade, San Bernardino County has been like the little Dutch boy, plugging the leaks in its ethics dike only to find more ethical leaks spouting here, there and everywhere.
After a sweetheart lease in 1998 on a building owned by a supervisor’s buddies, the county wrote a new policy requiring competitive bidding on real estate leases.
After a bribe-ridden, no-bid contract to operate the county’s landfills in the 1990s, the county committed to open bidding.
Still, in the past 18 months, five former county officials have been charged with misusing public money, lying to the grand jury and failing to report gifts from a developer who got a $102 million settlement from the county.
Now the DA has announced his ethics reform proposals. Lots of luck.
Not that the proposals don’t have merit. They do. But the success rate isn’t promising.
DA Mike Ramos traces many of the county’s problems to supervisors’ meddling in day-to-day operations.
He proposed reforms that would keep the supervisors’ hands off decisions that should be made by the county administrative officer.
He also proposed limits on campaign contributions and regulation of political action committees that allegedly tainted the settlement.
Assistant DA Jim Hackleman said Ramos is concerned about $100,000 chunks of money coming from a single source and flowing through PACs to influence elections.
To insulate elections from money, the DA also wants to limit campaign contributions from a single source to a candidate or committee, as other counties do.
But contribution limits are a sticky wicket, often challenged as unconstitutional.
I’d rather see elected officials prohibited from voting on matters that financially benefit anyone who gives them more than a certain amount. Hackleman said that may be worth exploring.
But no matter what happens, I’m afraid the reforms won’t end the constantly morphing corruption of San Bernardino County.
For instance, supervisors haven’t learned the lesson of no-bid contracts.
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What about the no bid contract that Ramos gave his campaign manager for mamagement consulting services? She had absolutely no experience in being a management consultant. The contract was for $25,000. He is now paying her out of campaign funds to the tune of $15,000. She is an attractive woman which may have something to do with it. Hardly a qualification for taxpayer money. But it certainly fits his M O.
What about the Supervisors, obviously with the backing of the DA, getting their offices “debugged” by a contractor instead of having the Sheriff’s office do the job. And the excuse, that the SO are not on the approved vendors list?! Cassie, its actually far worse than you portray, in San Bernardino County we have the number one abuser threatening the BOS, and therefore the people that elected them, that he alone has become the ethics and moral police. Since he has the authority to selectively pursue, prosecute and prostitute out public resources, he alone determines what behavior is acceptable and what is not. These delusions make it crystal clear that the FBI must intercede and hold pimp Mikey’s face to the mirror, because he obviously still believes that he “is the fairest one of all”.