Carl Becker was the last of the 3 Mohicans to resign.
Becker's buddy County Attorney (and profanity-spewing alcoholic with shaking hands) Richard Spinney "retired with honors" at the end of 2012 - see a "plaque of honor" being handed to spinney by Delaware County Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Jim Eisel, Spinney's partner in crime who authorized all those multi-million no-public-bidding contracts to friends and relatives - for years, with Carl Becker as an Assistant County Attorney in tow, and Bill Moon and his satellite non-profits as beneficiaries of their shady deals:
Social Services Commissioner Bill Moon retired at the end of 2014, but was since in the middle of controversy, civil and criminal proceedings - against Moon's apparent accomplice Carolyn Massey, who allegedly "got a poor advice from a fellow employee" (Moon?). Moon, of course, was not prosecuted.
Carl "Fritz" Becker, Bill Moon and Dick Spinney were the trio of bosom friends and colleagues of nearly 30 years engaged in fixing social services cases and, as the audit revealed, finicking with County finances for all the time they were in office, preventing multi-million contracts of Delaware County from being publicly bid, as required by law, and spawning satellite non-profit corporation sucking taxpayer money from the County.
None of the trio were criminally prosecuted because Carl Becker's former law partner John Hubbard - now Acting Delaware County District Attorney running for the District Attorney's seat in November this year - was "prudently" installed into the District Attorney's office to block any efforts to criminally prosecute them, a job which #JohnHubbard fulfilled admirably.
The audit of the New York State Comptroller of 2014-2015 revealed that:
1) contracts of the county were not submitted to public bidding - and they are not submitted now either;
2) the use of cars bought with public money is not monitored, such cars are unnecessarily assigned to County employees, and some good cars were sold as scrap to county insiders and then flipped for profit as perfectly good cars;
3) there were multiple conflicts of interest in how funds were handled by the county.
Since the audit, I have made numerous FOIL requests regarding the contracts, the use of public funds on the newly acquired German shepherd, the "K-9 unit" Ozzie (nee Neron), contracts submitted to public bidding, use of cell phones by the county.
This blog is word-searchable, so you can find those numerous blogs by putting "FOIL", "K-9", "Ozzie", "bidding" into the search window on the right.
The county universally stonewalled by FOIL requests.
From reluctant admissions and predominant denials of my FOIL requests this year, the following picture appeared:
1) the county does not have a system of public bidding on contracts - so multimillion contracts each year may still be awarded to insiders, which means that the price may be not competitive, and the taxes claimed by the County to cover their "services" and those contract, are not justified, and the tax foreclosures on Delaware County homes are not justified either;
2) some private individuals are corrupting the local police by paying for the upkeep of the police dog, while the County released to me the alleged numbers as to funds used for upkeep - but not the names of individual "donors";
3) the County's cell phone bill for 1 month is on 321 pages (!), indicating how many county employees enjoy cell phone service at taxpayers' expense.
Now, as to the 321-page cell phone bill, the County refused to provide to me a scanned copy of the bill, claiming from me to pay for the copies of those cell phone bill at 25 cents a page.
In response to that request, I made yet another FOIL request, asking for the inventory of copying, printing and scanning equipment, and print-to-pdf software, becuase the law requires the County to provide to me electronic copies of public records - free of charge - if the County has a means to turn a paper bill into a scanned format as easily as to copy it.
By the way, I doubt that the County gets its telephone bill in paper format and not by e-mail, and a phone bill obtained by e-mail can be easily forwarded in answer to a FOIL request, the effort requires just a couple of clicks on the mouse.
Here is what I received from the Delaware County's Clerk of the Board of Supervisor Ms. Christa Schafer in response to my FOIL request for the inventory of the printing, copying and scanning equipment, so that the County would prove to me that their claim of money for paper copies of the bill is justified and is not simply a way to make my FOIL request more expensive than the law requiers it to be:
What I've learnt in dealing with Delaware County officials over the years - you sometimes just give the idiots enough rope to hang themselves and then sit back and watch it happen.
I was asking for the INVENTORY OF EQUIPMENT bought with taxpayer money - including my husband's and mine.
The County tells me that they DO NOT HAVE THE INVENTORY.
That means that the Treasure of the County is a CRIMINAL, because she does not create an inventory of what the county purchased and has at this time.
That means that any property that the County has is unaccountable as to how it was purchased, where it is and when, to whom, how and for what amount it was sold - goes to competence and integrity of the Treasurer (Carl Becker's likely girlfriend, judging from her statements in Carl Becker's 2012 election campaign - she revealed interesting knowledge of Becker's activities "after hours" and on weekends, while appearing in front of him as a party litigant; note Shields also lovingly calling Judge Becker as "Fritz"):
That means that whenever the Treasurer purchases new printing/scanning/copying/computer equipment or software, the Delaware County Treasurer Beverly Shields (the remaining link for the resigned trio of Becker-Moon-Spinney) does it illegally, because Shields does not have the inventory to prove that she does not ALREADY have such equipment, but sold it to some of the multiple relatives teeming in the employment of the County, "the land of kissing cousins", or their friends.
Imagine - the county does not even have records reflecting whether they bought expensive printers or scanners, repaired them, sold them or not!
As an attorney, I attended meetings in the backrooms of the County buildings at 111 Main street.
Believe me, there was A LOT of printing/scanning equipment, expensive combined printers/scanners, sitting on tables there.
All of those are unaccounted for.
All of those can be picked up and taken home by anybody at any time.
That's YOUR money, Delaware County taxpayers, going down the drain - or, rather, being stolen from you by the Treasurer and her accomplices.
So, on July 5, 2016, the Delaware County, New York, which is being funded by taxpayer money, including my husband's money and my own, voluntarily admitted to me, IN WRITING, that its Treasurer and whoever else is responsible in maintaining the County accounts, purchases, repairs and inventories - are criminals.
Well, thank you, Christa Schafer and Delaware County, for this rare 4th of July revelation, I will pursue this information further, with appropriate authorities.
No comments:
Post a Comment