August
30, 2014
Chico
Enterprise-Record
In response to letter writer
Charles Geshekter: I decided to look in to the 2014 Grand Jury report after
reading editorials and letters to the editor that claimed that the report
proves that liberals caused the city's financial problem.
I knew from news articles that
Mark Sorensen played a significant role in setting the investigation in motion
and supplied most of the information it relied on.
The jury had a choice to start
its investigation with some point in time. Why did it pick 2008, the year of
the "great recession"?
If you really wanted to try to
determine what policies and practices of the city led to the deficits, the
reasonable place to look was the period of prosperity that ended in 2007 with
the city $6 million in debt.
According to documents
referenced in the report, the practice of manipulating funds to hide the
deficit goes back more than 20 years to at least the mid-1980s.
Reading the report, I was
dismayed that the evidentiary section was full of mostly hearsay accusations
that seem to come from Brian Nakamura and Sorensen. The findings section did
not have a single finding on the impact of the recession or the loss of the
Redevelopment Agency .
Finally, the 2013 report
covered everything. There was no need for a further investigation. The 2013
report found Nakamura lying. The 2014 report treated him like the savior. It is
for these reasons that I question the motives behind the report.
— Mike Bush, Chico
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