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April 20, 2008
Dirty Deals Done Dirt Cheap.
Today's Times Free Press features a well-researched expose of Worst Mayor Ever Ron Littlefield's unbelievably corrupt back-room deal that gave his long-time buddy Dale Mabee the keys to City Hall, and apparently the city coffers as well. The highlights from the newspaper read like a subpeona:
1. Ron Littlefield and Dan Johnson gave Dale Mabee (Ron's campaign manager) an interest free loan to finance the $1.07 million dollar land purchase. Huh?! That has never been done in all of the downtown development that has revitalized our city. It'd be one thing if this was the first downtown construction project and it needed to succeed to build the market--like the old Riverset Apartments. But I think the ball is pretty well rolling on downtown residential and the marketplace can regulate itself. I'm not at all surprised that Ron Littlefield, a man so devoid of ethics he'd have to climb up to the bottom of the skuzzy barrel, gave his campaign manager a free loan. After all, the man has to be paid back for all the lies and character assassination he's responsible for.
2. Then they gave Dale and the Moon boys the option on the rest of the block. That wasn't even in the request for proposals (RFP) released by the city to bring in bids by competing developers. In the paper Dan 'Bankrupt Doesn't Just Describe My Morals' Johnson said it just made sense because any developer would want to control the rest of the block. Well, that may very well be the case grandad, but that developer should compete with everyone else for what gets developed on that block. It's called free enterprise. Except it's not when it's not competitively bid. Folks, this is just plain wrong.
3. Then they gave him a free alley for access to the luxury condos, which was valued at nearly $100,000. Seriously, this is amazing. This wasn't offered as part of the original RFP either. Why not just have city work crews cut down the trees and pave the alley for free as well?
We at WorstMayorEver.com have decided to leave the not-very-lucrative protest Website business and move into real estate development. The first order of business for Billy Blades & Company, LLC is to donate to the Littlefield re-election campaign. That should guarantee that we get these kind of sweetheart deals. And as a bonus, when Ron is re-elected, it'll guarantee the corruption continues for four more years!
4. Then they accepted a promissory note instead of, ya know, actual money! Excuse-the-hell-out-of-me?!? I know he's your friend and all, but if he didn't have the money to finance the project, maybe Mabee (hee! I made a funny!) should go back to building crappy McMansions in the suburbs. It's not like our country's in a credit crunch or anything, so Ron & Dan's Favors For Friends Machine can just keep cranking out the graft, with no consequences at all.
The really sweet part of all of this (Hey, it's the stinky part too--that's weird.), is that all of this started because Ron Littlefield hired a bunch of auditors to sic them on RiverCity. They found only piddling things--none illegal or unethical--less than you'd find on your average new WalMart construction project. But somehow Ron & Dan's auditors completely ignored all of this in their report. Not until the Times wrote the story this morning were the shady Deals For Dale revealed. So Littlefiend's vindictive nature has come back to bite him in the ass. Make's a person believe that justice can prevail. Sorry, a little optimism about our city government slipped through. I'll get a handle on that.
For the record, hiring auditors to look into those who use the public's funds is a good thing. But the city charter dictates that they report to the City Council, not the mayor. The City Council controls all the money, so why would you have the people who check the books report to the person whose books they are checking? So you can control what they look at and report, obviously. This reporting structure has been wrong for a while, it just took someone of Littlefield's (lack of) character to misuse it.
It's time for the City Council to look into all of this. It's time for the City Council to bring the auditors under their purview. And it's almost time for a serious candidate to step up and declare that this kind of thing is going to stop.
p.s. I [heart] Dave Flessner.
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| By Billy Blades | 11:04 PM
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