Posted on 02/02/2005 8:06:56 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, scheduled to testify under oath Thursday before a legislative committee, received a reprieve Wednesday when legislative leaders pushed the hearing back to Feb. 22.
Although legislative leaders said independent counsels appointed by both parties needed more time to study the case, there was renewed speculation that Shelley may resign before the new hearing date.
Wednesday's postponement would provide three additional weeks to negotiate conditions of stepping down, which a handful of Democratic lawmakers and most of the state's major newspapers have asked Shelley to do. Critics have said he is no longer effective in the state's top elections office.
The delay also followed talks between the Legislature's Republican and Democratic leaders and newly hired attorneys for the Joint Legislative Audit Committee hearings.
A statement by legislative leaders said the delay would give the attorneys "time to review all pertinent material, including more than 5,000 pages of documents from the state Auditor's office."
Shelley spokeswoman Caren Daniels-Meade said the delay doesn't change Shelley's plans for the hearing.
"The secretary intends to continue to cooperate with the committee," she said.
Daniels-Meade said she wouldn't comment on the possibility Shelley could quit before Feb. 22.
After the committee chairwoman, Assemblywoman Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, threatened to subpoena him, Shelley agreed Jan. 12 to testify. The committee is investigating Shelley's oversight of $46 million in federal Help America Vote Act funds, which a December state audit said his office had managed poorly. The audit also said didn't properly oversee consultants it hired.
The audit didn't cite Shelley with criminal wrongdoing, but it noted that HAVA money paid for aides to attend partisan events, promote Shelley at fund-raisers and conduct other duties with little connection to the federal law.
The federal Election Assistance Commission is also auditing Shelley's handling of the money, part of nearly $4 billion authorized by Congress in 2002 to prevent repeats of Florida's disastrous 2000 presidential election. The money aims to modernize the nation's voting machinery, increase voter outreach and prevent voter disenfranchisement.
Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, a Republican from Stockton and a JLAC member, said he's more concerned with what happened with the money than with the chance Shelley may resign.
"We're talking about millions of federal taxpayers' dollars misappropriated and misspent," Aghazarian said. "There's potential we may be asked to give money back."
Shelley faces more investigations into allegations he bent state hiring rules to reward political cronies, including the son of a major San Francisco fund-raiser, made crude sexual remarks at work and verbally attacked staffers. Finally, a Sacramento federal grand jury is also investigating $125,000 he received during his 2002 campaign from recipients of $168,000 in state grants he steered as a state assemblyman toward a San Francisco neighborhood center that was never built.
If Shelley resigns, he would be the first state constitutional officer to do so since former state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Shelley Quackenbush quit in June 2000 after months of mounting charges that he tapped a state insurance fund established by his office to further his political career. Quackenbush, a Republican who stepped down a day before he was scheduled to testify before the Assembly Insurance Committee, told San Francisco's KNTV on Tuesday that Shelley's problems are "painfully deja vu."
"It's the same type of lynch mob mentality getting started around him," said Quackenbush, speaking from the studio of an NBC affiliate in Dayton, Ohio. "Lots of charges swirling. They get amplified and magnified. Pretty soon they're putting the rope around his neck."
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On the Net:
Secretary of State's office: http://www.ss.ca.gov
Joint Legislative Audit Committee: http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/newcomframeset.asp?committee208
February 22 is "I cannot tell a lie" day, isn't it? I wonder if that's significant?
"Lots of charges swirling. They get amplified and magnified. Pretty soon they're putting the rope around his neck."
So when can we start using the rope?
to keep the red diaper doper babies and GReenies happy, a hemp rope might add a nice touch..
Chuck has no one to quack at but himself, imo.
Shelley's only character witness is Chuck Quackenbush?
...former state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Shelley Quackenbush
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