Food for Thought

A few years ago, I was in China on business and read in the English language newspaper there about a man who had embezzled the equivalent of $50,000 from some government agency. He was found guilty in court and immediately taken out the back of the courthouse and executed by firing squad. The crime of embezzlement of any amount is punishable by death in China and there is no appeal process. It’s no wonder that this crime is rare in that country. Now I am not holding up the Chinese system of justice as an example of anything to emulate and I certainly do not advocate the death penalty for embezzlement. However, it provides a stark contrast to how we treat “misappropriaters” of public funds in the USA.

In the past year, I have written columns about questionable travel expenses at the Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) board, and recently we discussed similar activity at the city’s retirement department and board.  The story then was that the city auditor wanted to take a look at the accounts of the retirement department board, who were putting up a wall of resistance, claiming that they had already hired their own auditor who looked into the matter and found nothing. (This is the “Godfather” defense; you know, where Tom Hagen says something like, “My Client, Mr. Corleone, is innocent of all charges. I know because I talked to him about it. For one thing, he says he ‘didn’t see nuttin’,’ and for another, he says he ‘don’t know nobody.’”)

In light of the retirement department’s resistance, I argued for even more intense scrutiny by the city auditor’s office that has now completed its report . And guess what? Yep. They found that in the last 2 ½ years, retirement department officials did not document $50,000 in travel reimbursements and billed the pension funds for $6,300 in ineligible expenses. Fifty thousand bucks filched from the public till by those entrusted with the funds found its way into their pockets, just like the poor schmuck in China. Good thing we don’t have that firing squad solution here in San Jose, otherwise we’d be out headhunting for new department management. Instead, they get a slap on the wrist, are asked to pay back a few bucks, and are required to adhere to a new policy. This is outrageous in my view. At the very least, every one of these people should be shown out the door and banned from further employment in public “service.”  The DA should investigate the matter thoroughly and if the evidence warrants it, they should be prosecuted for embezzlement.

The kind of hanky panky going on at the SCVWD and San Jose city retirement department is, I am sure, only a tiny fraction of similar misappropriation of public funds going on in our city, county, state and country. And who is to blame for this? We are. We have abdicated (by default) our civic responsibilities as citizens to safeguard the public (our) interest in favor of thin air. The partisan old-boy (and girl) network of political pyramid climbers have turned their attention to grabbing their own, ever-larger prizes, leaving us to pick up the tab and suffer the indignities of having to finance luxury jet-set lifestyles for those who are supposed to be serving us and managing our institutions on our behalf while we try and make ends meet every day. The best solution is for our citizenry to act and provide our own public oversight for every individual institution that is financed by us and charged with administering our government. Thanks to a few of our Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, we actually have the right to do it, unlike, say, the citizens of China.

So, how can we accomplish this in San Jose and Santa Clara County? I would like to hear your ideas. I have one that I would like to propose.

The most sacred civic duty is voting. After that, it’s serving, when called, as a juror. Let’s elevate public oversight to the level of jury service. We have a jury selection system and process in place and it works fine. Let’s adopt that process to constitute public oversight “juries” with the power to look into and monitor anything and everything at a city or county government institution. It can be based on the grand jury model but focused on monitoring a single department (if large enough) or specified group of smaller institutions. Each jury-commission would elect a foreman. Each person selected would serve a specified time, say a year, and service during that time would be required one evening a week, for instance, or as necessary. This service could be in lieu of regular jury service and volunteering would be a substitute for such service where people often find it difficult to take several weeks off work when selected. When anything resembling criminal activity is detected, the oversight jury would be required to hand that evidence over to the county grand jury to handle in the usual way.

In addition, let’s empower the oversight citizen jury with the ability to, by majority vote, overturn any internal policy or financial (such as travel expenses) decision at their department, and subpoena any employee to appear before them and answer their questions and, by unanimous or supermajority consent, terminate employment. The possibility of confrontation with a body of angry empowered citizens, where public employees would be required to justify their own dubious actions or face losing their jobs then and there, would be enough to stop the sort of trough feeding that has been going on at the city retirement department and the SCVWD. 

If you have anything to add to this basic idea of systematic public oversight, or, short of adapting the Chinese method, you would like to suggest an idea of your own, I would love to hear it.