Dixon mayor responds after comptroller arrested
DIXON — Allegations that a finance officer for a small northern Illinois city was able to steal a staggering $30 million from government coffers to run a nationally renowned horse breeding business inspired calls today for more rigorous oversight in small communities that typically face less scrutiny.Dixon's mayor pledged new measures to protect the city's finances a day after FBI agents arrested longtime comptroller Rita Crundwell. She is accused of using the money to fund one of the nation's leading horse breeding operations and feed a lavish lifestyle that kept her outfitted with cars and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.
$30 million dollars. From a city with, as Joe tells me, some 16K people. Folks, the city next door to us has some 70K people, and they would notice if $3 million were missing, let alone $30mil. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that someone could bilk a small town out of that kind of money - in just six years. The story says that the operating budget of the town is $20 million per year - so this woman was stealing $5 million a year - a full quarter of the operating budget - and no one noticed.
HOWEVER...
As I said in e-mail to Joe, at least this person is being prosecuted. Here in Massachusetts, we "don't look back" and just let the misappropriation of a half a million dollars just slip under the table. Oh, that money went missing? Ho hum, that's yesterday's news. We don't get paid to look back, we only look forward. I'll have to remember that at my next performance review at work - no, let's not talk about my performance last year, because that's in the past. I can hear my boss laughing as I'm escorted off premises.
So, which is worse - a city employee being able to steal $5 million dollars a year for six years before getting caught, or a town losing half a million and then not having an investigation?
That is all.
4 comments:
It's all bad.
A couple of days ago, I posted an article about a State Patrol Lieutenant who padded his paycheck with some extra OT, to the tune that he earned 20K more than any other State Patrol Officer in Washington. This tripped some trigger points, and he was caught, and will face prosecution.
My point was that this kind of thing has been going on, at ALL levels, for a long, long time.
Now that budgets are shrinking, you are finally going to see the kind of accounting and accountability that we should have seen all along, and I think you are going to see a lot more stories like this.
To answer your question, I think I still need to go with Lynn as being the worse case, due to the lack of interest in prosecution. If the city itself doesn't care then the State or Feds should look into it.
The City is not self-funded. At some point, State/Federal dollars have rolled through the balance book...that should give someone who wants to make an example all the excuse they need to pick at the scab that the city doesn't want picked at.
I find it hard to believe that somebody could siphon off 25% of a cities budget without ANYBODY noticing.....what I would look for is Who benefited from the cash. Seeing as how it is an Illinois city; you have to look at the Chicago mob....Obama, Oprah, Holder and that short jew boy that runs chicago now.
Seems like the horse business/farm is a perfect cover for some stimulus dollars to be laundered.
Steve
Greg, we here in Wisconsin have our own law enforcement cranks that cook the system. Almost all of the prison guards make more in overtime then they do with their regular salaries.
$55,000 is a typical salary. $45000 to $60000 is usually paid in overtime. And nobody sees anything wrong with that. Oh and a bus driver in Madison, WI got paid over %250,000 one year.
Steve
Getting paid for OT you work is one thing...when I worked for The Man at Puget Sound Shipyard, there were a few years I almost doubled myself up on OT.
This guy got caught being paid for OT he didn't work, which is why there are criminal charges involved...
Post a Comment