I am so impressed with the new San Diego City Ethics Commission. Ever since Gil Cabrera left, the commission has started to go after actual corruption and abuse instead of mistakes.
The city of San Diego's Ethics Commission released an opinion today that could curtail how political parties can donate to next month's City Council primaries.
Political parties can contribute unlimited amounts to council campaigns for the June 8 primary by taking advantage of a window in the city's campaign finance rules. The local Republican Party, whose lawsuit spurred changes to city campaign laws, has announced it would give $20,000 to Lorie Zapf, a candidate in District 6 running to replace termed-out Democrat Donna Frye.
But the Ethics Commission is requiring political parties to conform to the city's $500 individual contribution limits. In other words, if the Republican Party donates $20,000 to Zapf, then it would need to identify 40 people who gave $500 to the party.
These rules, Ethics Commission Executive Director Stacey Fulhorst said, are to prevent parties from acting as a "pass through" from donors to candidates.
Local Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric, who committed to making the Zapf donation, said he hadn't see the commission's opinion and needed to consult his attorneys before commenting on how it might affect the donation.
"At this point I'm unsure," Krvaric said. "But we're committed to our support for Lorie Zapf."
I certainly agree with this finding by a panel of investigators in Virginia. It applies to schools all across the country:
"...[T]here is "an unreasonable presumption" by some central administrators that principals would never willfully violate law or policy, and 'they are hesitant to adequately investigate possible wrongdoing, even in the face of documentary evidence that negates the presumption."
A middle school principal coerced teachers into fabricating students' work to help win state accreditation, then lied to get a teacher fired who refused to cheat and who reported testing problems to the division and the state, according to an investigatory report.
In addition, the school division's top administrators refused to demand that Lafayette-Winona Middle School Principal Cassandra Goodwyn comply with state testing standards and dismissed the whistle-blower's evidence that he refused to bend testing rules...
The panel
The members were Assistant City Attorney Derek Mungo; Leigh Butler, director of teacher education services at Old Dominion University; and Dennis Moore, senior coordinator of pupil personnel services for Norfolk schools.
Lafayette-Winona principal is faulted
A panel of investigators found Lafayette-Winona Middle School Principal Cassandra Goodwyn improperly selected students for alternative testing, removed students’ work if it appeared it would fail, ignored staff recommendations to correct policies and severely disciplined a whistle-blowing teacher.
Reached late Tuesday, Goodwyn denied any wrongdoing and said she has evidence to prove it.
Executive director is faulted
The report found that the division’s executive director for middle schools, Cathy Lassiter, stood by while the whistle-blower was unfairly disciplined. The report states: “She failed to fulfill the prescribed duties” of her position and and to uphold the division’s core values...
Understanding the Education Debacle Karen Horwitz May 14, 2010
In your article you said: "'According to the report, the panel found there is "an unreasonable presumption" by some central administrators that principals would never willfully violate law or policy, and 'they are hesitant to adequately investigate possible wrongdoing, even in the face of documentary evidence that negates the presumption.'" I can tell you why this unreasonable presumption takes place all over this nation. Organized crime is rampant in our schools and part of its organization is successfully keeping it away from the press so it can go on with no scrutiny. What they are labeling unreasonable is in effect a cover up I can document all over this nation and until the public gets what is being covered up, nothing does make sense. I wrote a book all about this organized crime in education called White Chalk Crime: The REAL Reason Schools Fail. All the answers are there. Check out WhiteChalkCrime.com and EndTeacherAbuse.org and you will learn just how teacher abuse, which you described in your article, underpins this organized crime. I have organized whistle blowing teachers so they can finally be heard above the propaganda. They are the people who have been disappeared by this system of White Chalk Crime, and they are eagerly awaiting an opportunity to testify or merely speak to reporters. However, somehow these truths are evaporated by the system that holds so much power and extends to the corporate controlled press.
With so many people mesmerized by the free market theory, those who want our schools to self destruct so they can privatize them are in the lead. However, had they done their homework on free market philosophy they would know better than to trust a system that abandons regulations. If people would just read Naomi Klein's book Shock Doctrine they would get it. But people talk about education rather than self educate and this is why those really trying to solve the problem of our schools are lost and subject to the power of those determined to privatize the schools. Granted government can be and is corrupt. But it is the only balance to corruption in business and anyone who thinks that greed does not take over has been asleep these past years.
What we need is good government, not less government, yet our people are being manipulated by free marketers totally unaware what that means. Ruining our schools killed two birds with one stone: made people too uneducated to figure out where they were being led and opened up the opportunity to privatize them. We cannot solve this problem without looking at the big picture or that the destruction of the public school system is a definite part of the free market agenda. So while we agonize about issues from bullying to cheating to drop outs, the free market people are laughing all the way to the bank, literally...
My wish has come true: the San Diego ethics commission is finally acting on real corruption. Graham's Ethics Commission Case Advances by Rob Davis Voice of San Diego May 12, 2010
Nancy Graham, the former Centre City Development Corp. president who resigned nearly two years ago, is due before the San Diego Ethics Commission this week and next.
The commission has alleged that Graham broke city laws by improperly making decisions in office that benefited her business associates. It has proposed a maximum $170,000 fine against Graham. While at CCDC, Graham sat in on negotiations about a downtown hotel with Lennar Corp., her former business partner. She hadn't disclosed the more than $3 million in income she received from a business deal with the company.
Graham, who has since pleaded no contest to a failure to disclose her economic interests while president, has a hearing on a narrow set of issues Thursday before the commission.
Her attorney, Paul Pfingst, is contesting the commission's jurisdiction in the case and arguing that the 34 counts filed against her should be condensed to one. He argues that her many meetings with Lennar -- each charged as separate counts -- constitute one event, not many.
The commission argues that Pfingst's questions about jurisdiction amount to a "hypertechnical distinction" in the law. In a legal brief, its attorney, Alison Adema, dismissed Pfingst's argument for condensing the charges as "absurd," and noted that Graham's involvement in the hotel project over a two-year period constituted multiple violations of city law. The law, she wrote, is designed to punish all efforts to improperly influence municipal decisions -- not just the first.
That will be heard at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
Graham is also due before the commission for an administrative hearing next Thursday, May 20, at 9 a.m. That hearing will allow both sides to present and argue
Fabrice Tourre comes across as an arrogant investment banker in the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against him and his employer Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
But personal emails released by Goldman /quotes/comstock/13*!gs/quotes/nls/gs (GS 151.93, -5.47, -3.48%) this weekend show Tourre struggling with "ethical questions" as he sold complex mortgage-related securities that he worried were suspect.
The SEC charged Goldman with securities fraud on April 16, alleging the investment bank didn't tell investors in a collateralized debt obligation that hedge fund firm Paulson & Co. helped structure the deal and was betting against it. Goldman and Paulson have denied wrongdoing. Read about the charges.
The SEC also charged Tourre, an executive director in Structured Products Group Trading, with securities fraud, alleging he was mainly responsible for the CDO, known as ABACUS 2007-AC1. Pamela Chepiga, an attorney for Tourre, declined to comment.
In the suit, the SEC quoted a January 2007 email that Tourre sent to a friend.
"More and more leverage in the system, The whole building is about to collapse anytime now...Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre]...
From where I sit, Gil Cabrera and Marty Emerald look like twins. They are politicians careful not to rile the wrong people. But lately I've been feeling that Gil Cabrera is the twin who's hiding more. It's pretty clear what Marty's agenda is. She's a mainstream Democrat, defending the little guy to the extent acceptable to the powers that be. But what's up with Cabrera? What exactly is his agenda?
Why does he just go after small, technical violations of ethics laws, and steer clear of addressing true, deep corruption in our government and legal system?
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- As the 2008 financial crisis was developing, top Securities and Exchange Commission employees and contractors were using government computers on official time to view pornography, according to an SEC inspector general.
The SEC's inspector general found that 33 employees or contractors violated commission rules and policies by viewing porn, according to a memo obtained Friday by MarketWatch. The investigation was requested by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The memo reported incidents by year:
*
2010: 3 so far *
2009: 10 *
2008: 16 *
2007: 2 *
2006: 1 *
2005: 1
The 33 employees cited in the memo represent less than 1% of the SEC's approximately 4,000 employees. Of those employees, 17 were senior officials whose salaries ranged from $100,000 to $222,000, according to the memo. It isn't clear if the employees discussed in the memo were involved in oversight matters related to the financial crisis.
According to the memo, a regional office supervisory staff accountant admitted he frequently viewed pornography at work on his SEC computer for about a year and accessed pornography on his SEC-issued laptop computer while on official government travel.
Another regional office supervisory staff accountant admitted that he used an SEC assigned computer to access Websites containing pornography and other sexually explicit material during work hours fairly frequently, sometimes twice a day, according to the memo.
Another regional office staff accountant received 16,000 access denials for Internet websites classified by the SEC's Internet filter as "Sex" or "porn" in a one-month period. "In addition, the hard drive of this employee's SEC laptop contained numerous sexually suggestive and inappropriate images," the memo said.
A senior attorney at the SEC's headquarters in Washington admitted accessing Internet port so frequently that, according to the memo, on some days, he spent eight hours accessing Internet porn.
"In fact, this attorney downloaded so much pornography to his government computer that he exhausted the available space on the computer hard drive and downloaded pornography to CDs or DVDs that he accumulated in boxes in his office," the memo said.
Rep. Darrell Issa , R-Calif., the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said he was disturbed by the findings.
"It is nothing short of disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at pornography than taking action to help stave off the events that brought our nation's economy to the brink of collapse," he said in a statement. "This stunning report should make everyone question the wisdom of moving forward with plans to give regulators like the SEC even more widespread authority. Inexplicably, rather than exercise its existing regulatory enforcement authority, SEC officials were preoccupied with other distractions."
Ronald D. Orol is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Washington.
I know you'll all be comforted, as I was Wednesday, by the public vote of confidence from Steve Schwartzman, chief executive of private equity giant Blackstone Group, when he said that his firm would continue to do business with Goldman Sachs and that he's never had a shred of doubt about the investment bank's ethical character.
So let me get this straight. Goldman Sachs is now relying on the character reference of a Wall Street sharpie who notoriously snookered investors into buying non-controlling shares of a private equity firm at the very moment when a credit-induced takeover bubble was about to burst...
President Obama challenged some of the nation’s most influential bankers on Thursday to call off their “battalions of financial industry lobbyists” and embrace a new regulatory structure meant to avert another economic crisis.
Speaking in the bankers’ backyard, at the Cooper Union in Manhattan, Mr. Obama castigated a “failure of responsibility” by Wall Street for having led to the financial crisis of 2008, and he pressed his case for what he called “a common-sense, reasonable, non-ideological” system of tighter regulation to prevent any recurrence. He took issue with the claim that his proposal would institutionalize the idea of future bailouts of huge banks.
“That may make for a good sound bite, but it’s not factually accurate,” Mr. Obama said. “It is not true. In fact, the system as it stands is what led to a series of massive, costly taxpayer bailouts...
On Thursday, April 8, the San Diego Ethics Commission held a televised meeting to hear an appeal by Councilwoman Emerald of the amount of the penalty assessed against her for two errors made during her campaign. There was no argument that the errors occurred. It was simply a question of how much the penalty should have been.
I watched the event (and it most definitely was an event; the city should have sold tickets!), but what I saw was not what appeared in our local print news.
Perhaps this is a perfect occasion to lament the loss of our unbiased print media, but let's leave that for another time. I want to give you my view of what actually happened at the hearing.
I give credit to Commissioner Valdez for handling a very difficult situation. He didn't do it as well as I would have liked, but his hands were somewhat tied.
First, he invited the Ethics Commission attorney to introduce her evidence. She needed to prove that the errors made by the Emerald campaign were so awful that they had to levy the largest fine possible for the infraction. She called both Ms. Emerald and her treasurer to the stand. She then closed her case...
The evidence did show that the treasurer contacted the commission as soon as she realized there could be a problem, that this was an isolated incident and that the Campaign Committee fully cooperated with Ethics Commission staff. (You can find the relevant Municipal Code regarding penalties here, under section 26.0438).
The code does not allow for penalties to be assessed if the commission thinks that there might have been negligence, if they can make innuendo as to the intention to deceive or if the executive director dislikes the candidate -- as she seemed to make an effort to show by her actions at the hearing. There needs to be proof...
The Ethics Commission did not attempt with its witness testimony to put any evidence into the record to prove that this was the most grievous error a campaign could make and therefore deserved the highest possible fine. It was that arrogance, that belief that they needed to make no effort to prove their case, that was the most striking action of the day to me.
So, despite that there had been no evidence given which would have allowed for a penalty, the hearing continued.
Mr. Ottillie was invited to call his witnesses. Immediately, the objections began.
Ms. Fulhorst, the Executive Director of the Ethics Commission had no place objecting -- that was for her attorney to do. And yet, she disrupted any attempt by Mr. Ottillie to put forward his evidence. She objected, sighed loudly into the microphone, tutted and tsked all the way through. Several times, when it appeared the witness might say something she didn't want to come out, she jumped in and actually testified before the witness could. But most of all, she objected to the waste of time it was for Mr. Ottillie to put forward any evidence. It was as if she believed that the outcome of the hearing was a predetermined thing, and the hearing was just a complete waste of her precious time.
I think we can all agree that a lot of the questions asked by Mr. Ottillie seemed somewhat pointless, but he has the right to put forward evidence of his client's innocence and to do so without the constant harassment of the person responsible for the assessment in the first place...
The North County Times loves controversial San Diego County Office of Education Attorney Daniel Shinoff, or at least it seemed so when they created a pretty puff piece about him in 2003. So why have they erased the story from their archives, and in such a clumsy manner?
My guess: because he asked them to do so.
Why? Because it contained information that proved that Shinoff filed a false (or at least highly misleading) document as an exhibit for his declaration in a defamation suit. It was an important declaration. The judge relied on it to make her decision in a summary judgment.
In some cases Stutz doesn't seem to evaluate the law and the facts of the case, just whether their public entity client can get away with wrongdoing.
Matthew Lee, a Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. senior vice president, warned in a May 2008 letter that he believed "senior management" may have violated Lehman's internal code of ethics by misleading investors and regulators about the true value of the firm's assets.
Mr. Lee addressed his letter to then-Chief Financial Officer Erin Callan and Chief Risk Officer Chris O'Meara, among others, only days before he was ousted from the firm. Portions of the letter were excerpted in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court examiner's report on Lehman released last week. A full version of the letter was reviewed Friday by The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Callan didn't return a phone call seeking comment.
Mr. Lee's complaints echo those of many investors and analysts at the time, who questioned whether Lehman was delaying write-downs to avoid potentially crippling losses. Mr. Lee, a 14-year veteran who headed the firm's global balance-sheet and legal-entity accounting, said Lehman had "tens of billions of dollars of unsubstantiated balances, which may or may not be 'bad,' or non-performing assets."
"I believe the manner in which the Firm is reporting [certain] assets is potentially misleading to the public and various governmental agencies," Mr. Lee wrote.
On Friday, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) asked the Justice Department to investigate alleged accounting manipulations that took place at Lehman and that were detailed in the 2,200-page examiner's report.
In the May 18, 2008, letter, Mr. Lee specifically criticized the accounting controls in Lehman's Mumbai office. "There is a very real possibility of a potential misstatement of material facts being efficiently distributed by that office," Mr. Lee wrote.
At the time, one India investment was drawing scrutiny from Lehman critics, including David Einhorn of hedge fund Greenlight Capital Inc. Mr. Einhorn questioned why the Wall Street firm had written up the value of a power plant there, known as KSK Energy Ventures, during the first quarter of 2008. In a speech to investors on May 21, Mr. Einhorn, who was betting that Lehman's stock would decline, said the firm had booked a $400 million to $600 million gain in the first quarter by writing up the value of KSK Energy...
Mr. Lee's lawyer, Erwin Shustak, of San Diego, said his client had complained orally for several months to his boss, Martin Kelly, Lehman's former global financial controller, about many of the same issues he raised "formally" in his letter. Mr. Kelly declined to comment, through a Barclays PLC spokesman, where he now works. According to the examiner's report, Mr. Kelly had raised concerns to top executives about the firm's accounting tactic, known as "Repo 105," which temporarily moved billions of dollars off its balance sheet, according to the examiner's report. The Lehman bankruptcy estate declined to comment...
"I have marveled at the silly things people have done in an effort to gain an imaginary advantage over a political opponent...In my experience, the folks who claim the commission staff was heavy handed are the ones who obfuscated and delayed the staff's investigative efforts at every stage necessitating more aggressive actions...Unfortunately, some people under investigation take shots at the commission publicly knowing that we cannot respond because of limits on our ability to comment on ongoing investigations." --Gil Cabrera Looking at 2010: Gil Cabrera's Ethics Scott Lewis Voice of San Diego January 7, 2010 3:20 pm
Gil Cabrera was considered the provocateur on the city of San Diego's Ethics Commission -- the one who pushed hardest, it seemed, in favor of things like lobbyist fundraising disclosure and campaign finance restrictions.
Among other laws, the Ethics Commission enforces the complex rules embodied in the city's Election Campaign Control Ordinance. For instance, candidates for City Council are not allowed to raise money for their campaigns until exactly one year before their Election Day.
The rules, and the fines the commission has exacted enforcing them, have infuriated local politicians (and, worse, their lawyers). The commission's funding, structure and leadership has been attacked.
Cabrera, a lawyer himself, was the commission's chairman and he served in that position quite well, I thought. But -- in a type of civic insult -- the mayor refused to reappoint him.
Now, Cabrera and other members of the commission are named in a lawsuit filed by a former City Council candidate, Phil Thalheimer. He is hoping to overturn many of the city's election laws.
I thought you might be interested in some reflections from Cabrera. I was.
What lessons do you take away from your time on the Ethics Commission?
Running for office is hard and the pressures associated with it and governing can lead to mistakes in judgment. I have marveled at the silly things people have done in an effort to gain an imaginary advantage over a political opponent. On a broader level, I have seen the inefficiency and disorganization within the city bureaucracy first hand. It seems things are often, if not usually, done with little pre-planning, that the departments are not usually pulling their oars at the same time and direction and that the private sector usually out negotiates the city...
Do ethical lawyers sometimes write a proposed order for a judge to sign that doesn't mention that their motion was denied?
I am interested in hypothetical situations. If you figure things out ahead of time, it makes it easier when push comes to shove to make the right decision.
So I've been working on this imaginary scenario in which a lawyer believes he can get a judge to sign an order that is significantly different from the minute order prepared by the judge. In this fantasy, a judge has denied the lawyer's motion without prejudice, and given the opposing party a very specific instruction. But the lawyer never mentions in his proposed order that his motion was denied, and he adds significant details to the judge's instructions.
Is this something an ethical lawyer would do? Hmmm. Do readers have any thoughts on the matter?
