Archive for the 'Oversite' Category
No Audit
The City of Surprise has a good program for the members of the City Council (maybe staff) use a city credit card for your own benefit. Chances are you don’t repay the city and if you get caught you only have to pay back the money without any penalty, sounds like a great deal.
Luckily the Arizona Republic uncovered this latest fiasco where city money was used for personnel gain.
Apparently the City of Surprise does not audit how our tax money is spent.
When this happens to other agency’s they prosecute
Associated Press
May. 16, 2007 12:08 PM Tucson, Ariz. - A former Patrol agent faces a possible prison sentence after admitting that he used an agency credit card for personal use.
Paul C. Smith 111, 33, entered a guilty plea Monday at the Federal Courthouse in Tucson to one count of theft of federal money, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona.
The maximum penalty Smith faces is a year in prison, a $100,000 fine or both.
Smith also agreed to pay restitution, resign from the U.S. Border Patrol and not seek future employment with local, state or federal law enforcement.
Smith used a Border Patrol credit card and charged $1,000 worth of work done on a golf cart.
Smith said he knew the card was paid automatically out of Border Patrol funds, so there was no way for him to repay
Many local governments have an established political culture with certain expectations and practices that often determine what is seen as acceptable in local politics. In municipalities with an undeveloped or underdeveloped political culture, accountability and legitimacy is usually low and principles of ethics in government are not established. This can encourage corruption to take hold in the local government because citizens do not know what is considered corrupt, and local officials are not afraid to be corrupt because of the low accountability. In some places the local governments have been corrupt for so long that the citizens think that is how it is supposed to work because that is all they have been exposed to. Long periods of political instability will also lead to corruption in the government because people are unsure of how the government should operate, and thus do not know what practices are corrupt or how to stop them if they are corrupt.
taken from the wikipedia
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