Police Warrants Outline Alleged County Con Job
Public Corruption Probe Advances...Ouch!
By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times
Filed 9.11.07
TETON COUNTY, Wyo. (CT) – Police continue to investigate an elaborate larceny and embezzling scheme involving the alleged over-charging of local vehicle buyers for their transfers of title and a “slush fund” kept in the desk drawer of a suspected employee of the Teton County clerk’s office.“I was shocked to learn that a trusted employee was suspected of embezzling funds,” County Clerk Sherry Daigle said in an official press release Friday.
Her face flushed behind her desk, Daigle said late Friday that she had fired a county worker earlier that day. Due to the ongoing corruption probe, however, Daigle declined to identify the terminated public servant.
Among items seized and inventoried in a search warrant returned Monday to 9th Circuit Court: 11 checks payable to the county clerk’s office and four $20 bills “located in an open plain white envelope with stickers on the exterior, known as the 'overflow slush fund'."
posted by Cowboy Times at 2:16 AM
4 Comments:
I'm confused.
I read the full story which is linked in the newwest article.
There is discussion of a slush fund, which is used for gourmet office coffee, birthday cakes, etc. Seems to denote that more than one knew about it.
Must be damned tasty birthday parties going on at the county building!
So are Jacksonites going to find that more than just longtime employee Renee Harrington was involved? Is that the talk?
And that's not snark. I'm really asking.
jhwygirl,
if you want to really spark a movement of citizen curiosity to reform local gov’t – and get to the bottom of how deep and how dirty this ongoing behavior likely goes -- and how little has been done to root it out or refute them -- check out the below links to the CT's prior exposes based on extensive, well-documented and well-founded examples of other long-standing county con jobs.
At the end of the day, maybe the Pharos only care about the Pharos?
Oh, I read those too....
In a town with so many perks, I don't know that many would care about a boondoggle or a unbid designer meeting room...but they might care that someone directly took $20 bucks out of theirpocket. That's a little more personal.
Hell - where I work the boss doesn't pick up the coffee tab - we gotta contribute to a fund.
jhwygirl & anonymous,
Both the boondooggles and the bid-rigging are like the alleged lien & title bunco operation in that all invovled are stealing funds and equal opportunities from John Q Pubic.
In the "boondoggles" or the endless cases of gov't employees and elected officials wallowing at the county trough via junkets, strip bars, free lunches around town, basketball tix, flowers, booze, gas on the dole, train tix for non-county employee spouses, etc., those reimbursed expenses for unofficial business were paid with public funds.
How many lunches for poor kids would all that self-indulgence of people making very fat salaries cover?
In the bid rig scam, the yellow pages lists over 20 bon fide interior decorators who were denied the equal chance to compete for the county job, because one person with clout used information, not otherwise available to the public, to steer the bid into the hands of a friend.
While considering issues of fairness, let's not overlook either the question: How do taxpayers know they're getting the most bang for their buck if the element of open competition is removed from the bidding process?
The shameless, self-righteous reactions of indignatioin are my favorite part, I think.
-- The Cowboy Times
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