Published: May 18, 2016 – Updated: 6:22 a.m.
In April 2015, anti-corruption investigators from the FBI and the Riverside County District Attorney’s office raided Beaumont City Hall and other locations.
The investigation led to seven former city officials facing charges of embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, conspiracy and conflict of interest, which Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin announced in a press conference on Tuesday, May 17.
To read Staff Reports in The Press-Enterprise, click here.
Why were the politicians left out? Surely they knew what was going on.
Not in this case, gab. Remember when this started Beaumont was a city of 10,000 in a rapidly growing region. Urban Logic convince the locals that by contracting out city services, they could immediately compete with the best run large cities around them. Immediately, Urban Logic set up the infrastructure to control the city, skim profits off of the revenue, and control the available information to the council, to regional and state agencies, and to the citizenry.
On the outside, it appeared that the quadrupling of the city was the result of geniuses at work. You have to give a lot of credit to the citizens on the inside who recognized the signs of wrongdoing and stood up against all forces to bring light to this situation.
It is interesting that Hestrin built the main part of his case on the money due but denied to the regional transportation authority. I will love to read more about this.
Beaumont is the opposite counterpart to the Bell case. Rizzo saw a small old deteriorating city populated largely of non US citizens that he could exploit. Urban Logic found a young, small, hick city that they could exploit. Rizzo fell when the old LA Times could no longer ignore Bell. Urban Logic fell as a result of its own success. Beaumont attractd a core of successful, educated, honest, and dilligent people.