Posted on 06/08/2004 1:18:11 AM PDT by calcowgirl
A state audit has accused the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy of mismanaging $7 million in voter-approved bond money that was supposed to be used to acquire and restore parkland.
In a scathing report, Department of Finance auditors found that the conservancy “does not adequately manage, control, or oversee” $115 million in bond funds, funneling away money to pay for legal fees, office expenses, conferences, cars, travel, vacation and sick pay, and “excessive” overhead charges.
“In our opinion, they’re not spending funds in line with the bond measures,” said Samuel E. Hull, chief of the Office of State Audits and Evaluations. “Some of the things they did I’ve never seen before. They are creative, I’ll give them that.”
(snip)
State auditors have chided the conservancy in the past. In 1997, an audit found that the agency had paid $2.2 million in interest because it used promissory notes to acquire land rather than buying it outright.
The May audit was particularly critical of the close ties between the conservancy and the authority, a joint powers authority that the conservancy created 19 years ago to manage its land acquisitions. Edmiston directs both groups, and the auditors found that the relationship “compromises both organizations’ ability to adequately protect the bond funds from waste, abuse or irregularities.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
At the Monday SMMC meeting, McIntyre said, "After 23 years of dining at the public trough with zero accountability, it is time for Joe to go. There will be no more stealth elections. There will be no more cash grabs at the expense of homeowners for the benefit of select developers and the political allies of this board. There will be no more trampling the rights of homeowners so an elite few can conspire ... to help themselves to more of our hard-earned money. You may have won this round, but I promise you, this fight has just begun."
How bout the Range of Light No Entry Zone?
In most such cases, "no entry" also means "no escape." One need only look at the map and consider it the other way around.
This is what I get as an error message: The requested URL /columnindex/js/sniffer.js was not found on this server. I have never seen this before. What does it mean?
Hey Uncle Mark, your paranoia is showing ;)
Call it a reflection on history. When the middle class defeated feudalism, it was in many respects because the lords were inside the castle and the people controlled the land. Methinks they won't make that mistake twice.
It's called a 404. It may be that your browser is attaching an extra character such as a slash to the URL. Some servers get touchy about that. Hover over the source link and see if when you click it that the exact text is repeated on the address bar at the top of the window. If that doesn't work, add a forward slash to the address and try it again.
IIRC, the French aristocracy was pretty much wiped out during the French Revolution. Something about peasants with pitchforks... and didn't the "barbarian" Goths sack Rome?
Including the right to market habitat management services. Welcome to FreeRepublic.
Not quite; the peasants had direction: freemasons with an objective. ;-)
You should've heard how angry Doug was the night he got his property tax bill! He was seriously ticked off.
Joe (whatever his last name is) actually called into the program to defend himself. It was quite the little chat.
Boy, we could really suck up some bandwidth with this subject couldn't we? ;-)
Is the Joe must go site his creation? BTW, thanks for the link, it made my day.
Happy to help.
This came about last November or December so I don't remember it clearly, but I'm pretty sure Doug set up the website.
I believe he also spearheaded the meeting in Agoura Hills that the article you read in the Malibu Times discusses. He said he needed some moral support from other residents in the area and he got it.
BTW, thanks for the link, it made my day.
You're welcome.
LOL! Not gonna happen, but I can say that there was even a Malthusian component to the Jacobin pholosophy.
That's been the goal of the Sierra Flub for a long time!!! In fact, at one time, they were actually going to name it "Charismatic Megaflora," but decided to stay with what John Muir called the mountain range.
I don't got to show you no steenkin Jacoby & Meyers lowyers!!! (there! How's that for shallow and insipid?)
To me... The whole point of this crooked conservancy in the Santa Monica mountains should most certainly be used to sound a HUGE ALARM to the Schwarzenegger Administration about this monstrosity of a Sierra Swindle of state already in desperate staights, fiscally.
This is gonna be a "double whammy" for rural Sierran Counties on top of Arnold's latest "deal" with cities and counties over their revenues!!!
But... I guess if only 13% of Recall voters had the good sense to listen to McClintock, then NOBODY's gonna listen to this!!!
When CA suffers a further fiscal collapse... Then EVERYBODY will be screamin at the danged full moon, sayin "WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE???"
I hope the Pacific States Legal Foundation in Sacramento is aware of this audit...
Since we now have the Schwarzenegger ideology of 'open government',
one should just be able to go to the Audit website and look at the report, right?
http://www.dof.ca.gov/FISA/OSAE/OSAE_Audit_Reports.HTM
Well... I guess not. The last audit report listed was from June 30, 2003.
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