Most candidates running for office usually are on their best behavior during the run-up to their election. They attend their meetings, skip the junket circuit, and generally try to avoid getting sucked into anything controversial.
Like I said, that’s MOST candidates.
Recently, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and the Citizens Against Government Waste released their annual Piglet Book highlighting example after example of waste in government around the state at its worst.
Pretty safe to say, on either side of the aisle, the Piglet book is not a place a candidate would want to appear prior to their race.
“While those responsible for the worst acts of waste, fraud and abuse may believe that the public is not watching or does not care, most are capable of being embarrassed when they are caught behaving badly. They should feel a sense of humiliation as their incompetence and misconduct receives this additional public scrutiny.”
Amen!
And given that, I could barely believe my eyes when I saw the name of a REPUBLICAN Assembly candidate show up on just Page 6!
A November 22, 2006 article in the Stockton Record highlighted a San Joaquin County supervisor’s attempt to pork up the county with various projects. The problem began in 2003 when the county allowed each of the four supervisors to receive $100,000 a year in 2003 and 2004, $200,000 in 2005 and $500,000 in 2006 for “special projects.” Reporter Greg Kane noted that during that time, one supervisor had “used $200,000 to save a struggling children’s dentistry program, while another had contributed nearly $65,000 for everything from youth projects to agricultural marketing programs.”
However, actions by now termed-out Supervisor Jack Sieglock take the cake. It turns out that Sieglock, who hadn’t spent any of his money, had two months left in office and more than $800,000 burning a hole in his pocket. While the board put a temporary hold on Sieglock’s biggest projects, it still approved $120,000 in spending including the purchase of new vans at a community center.
The only real winner out of this debacle may be Supervisor Victor Mow, who has not spent a dime of his money. He believes in the radical idea that county departments should make these requests in hearings, where they can be appropriately analyzed. “This process kind of flies in the face of [the budget] process,” Mow said.
On his website, the guy in question, former San Joaquin County Supervisor Jack Sieglock talks about a key reason behind his decision to run for Assembly being a desire to “fight for fiscally conservative governance.”
If pork-barrel spending so egregious that it gets him singled out in the Piglet Book is his idea of “fiscally conservative governance,” I think we’d be better off without him.