High Desert Perspective

Posted By B. Brier on August 28, 2009

County Supervisors Lukewarm To Ethics And Common Sense

Ethics and San Bernardino County. It goes together as well as bacon and ice cream.

One would think that San Bernardino County, with its well documented past history of ethics lapses, would work to establish an ethics commission with serious and thoughtful effort. One would think that county leaders – after demanding ethics reform from the last elected assessor – would easily support a concept of an ethics commission or an ethics commissioner.

But, no, if you thought that, you would be wrong.

At a recent board hearing on a proposed ethics commission, Second District County Supervisor Paul Biane was the first to publicly oppose the proposed ethics body. Ironically, Biane’s opposition came after his initial support for such an entity.

Biane likened the proposed ethics commission – an idea of Republican Party Supervisor Neil Derry – to the government-administered health care agenda of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Clearly trying to engineer public sentiment against the proposal, Biane issued a press release in which he likened the costs associated with county ethics reform (estimated around $500,000) to a multi-trillion-dollar government nationalization program.

“…When the public learns more about what this politically-attractive idea will cost taxpayers and the government bureaucracies it will create, the public enthusiasm quickly wanes.”

Socialized ethics, perhaps?

Nonsense. And Supervisor Biane should be  the last person to carry the torch in opposition to such a measure. After all, Biane himself failed to properly report gifts of airfare on his most recent disclosure forms. An omission that earned Biane scathing reviews from government watchdog organizations.

But Supervisor Neil Derry’s defense of the costs of the proposed commission was just as strange. Here are his comments in the San Bernardino Sun: “What’s $500,000 compared to our $4 billion annual budget? It’s .00125-percent of our budget. It’s a small price to pay to end corruption in our county and open up government to the public.”

Take that figure of .00125 percent. Multiply it by two. That new figure of .0025 percent represents the county budget appropriated to the executive staff of the county assessor under Bill Postmus.

Supervisor Derry has waged a crusade based on reclaiming what he says is misappropriated money on Postmus executive staff. It turns out that, according to Derry, the budget for Postmus’ exempt hires is an insignificant amount of the county’s total budget. If Derry is successful in reclaiming what he claims is wrongfully expended money, will Derry trumpet recovering .0025 percent of the county’s overall budget? More importantly, was it worth it?

San Bernardino County has a long way to go towards ethics reform. In fact, just today news broke that at least two supervisors – Derry and Board Chair Gary Ovitt – are being hauled before a grand jury investigating county corruption.

Statements in support of and in opposition by our county supervisors related to the proposed ethics commission do not inspire citizen confidence.
www.therealsbcounty.com

Categories: San Bernardino County
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