Earlier, I dropped 4,100 feet in elevation to do some business in the county seat and hunt down a few juicy political tidbits for my column. I have a few sources who are “in the know” around the halls of power in San Bernardino. I’ll tell you, though, one of these tipsters is bound to get me into trouble. Why do I get the feeling when I walk the corridors of power in San Bernardino that I’m cavorting with the wrong guys? As you will see below, government around here, it seems, is shot through with small time hoods who would be better associated with the numbers rackets than looking after the public’s affairs. I have now come back limp and tired to the chalet in Lake Arrowhead, where the hearth and my heart is, home. I went straightaway to my typewriter, and have returned to the grind of churning out a column…
According to my spies inside the county, high level officials there have closed what appears to be a dubious deal with the city of Adelanto to – and I am not quite sure what the right word is – transfer, exchange, trade, or divert – over $700,000 in community development block grant funds the city previously obtained for doing repairs and upgrades at the Hardy Fire Station and the city’s sports park to the county. In exchange, the county is to give Adelanto a similar amount of credit toward the city’s contract for law enforcement with the county sheriff’s department…
Community Development Block Grants are funds provided to local jurisdictions by the federal government, that is, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Recipients of the grants are required to hold public meetings to solicit input from the community, and are provided to local jurisdictions based upon their representations that they will utilize the money for the general purpose of improving the community…
The funds are subject to less federal oversight than many other programs. Nevertheless, the federal money is offered up with an expectation that it is going to be put to use on specific local needs.
What the county and Adelanto have worked out is a – can I use the term diversion? – of the block grant money to a purpose for which it was never intended. That money was supposed to be used for tangible improvements – capital improvements – to the city’s existing facilities, to benefit its citizens. It is now going to be used to pay the salaries of county employees, although officially the sheriff is supposed to use the money for making some of its facilities, including its detention center in Adelanto, accessible to the handicapped. So what will happen is the sheriff will then divert money intended for something else entirely to paying for deputies to patrol the streets and neighborhoods of Adelanto. I wholeheartedly support stepped up police activity, especially in a place like Adelanto. However, the means by which this is being accomplished is questionable, involving a series of diversions as one diversion begets another diversion and that diversion begets yet another…
When people who are not government officials use money contrary to its intended or approved purpose, they can get into trouble. It might be called misappropriation, which is a delicate way of saying stealing. Regular people go to jail or prison for diverting funds…
Very soon, I suspect, I will get a call or a letter from someone – maybe even a lawyer – who will endeavor to explain to me through my ignorance how there is nothing wrong with this deal and that it is just a creative way of achieving financial flexibility and using money where it is most needed and that this is a completely justifiable way of redistributing scarce money from one useless or obsolete endeavor to a more meaningful or necessary one. This is much like one hood rationalizing how the money in some mark’s pocket would be put to a way better use if it were in his own.,,