Lake County Fiscal Rangers

Florida County Activists Ask Lake County FiscalRangers for Help to Resolve Corruption

Activists and TeaParty members in other Florida Counties are aware of FiscalRangers.

We just got a query from one County activist group asking how they can stop corruption in their County.   They listed a number of officials and issues, so here is what I sent them, and I expect to talk to them later.

Vance Jochim

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 The Florida Grand Jury published a big report on Corruption in Florida last December and Pam Bondi has done nothing to market it to the legislature to get the recommendations implemented, even though her Attorney General Dept. runs the Grand Jury investigations.

The Florida Auditor General has no “resources” to initiate citizen requests for audits.   They mostly focus on CPA type financial and regulatory compliance audits, and not audits for efficiency, effectiveness or to detect and fix corruption.   Almost all local government oversight is left up to local County agencies and officials.

The legislative Audit Committee will not initiate citizen requests for audits, which are sent to the Auditor General, BUT they will do so if asked by a legislator.    So, you need to have a legislator request an audit like what you want, and the AG may do it .   But, the problem with the Auditor General is they only have CPA’s, not Certified Fraud Examiners or Certified Internal Auditors, thus really don’t have the skills I would want them to have.

There is no Florida "audit" or oversight agency authorized to initiate performance audits of either State or County level agencies and programs.   Florida State has over 1500 Special Districts and no department has authority to initiate audits of them (water districts, hospital districts, CRA's, etc.)

At the local level, see if the County Court Clerk for the County has an internal auditor, and whether they would initiate something.  Keep peppering them with details on your concerns, plus copies to the County Board members and County manager.  Determine if the School District has an auditor and review their reports for quality.

County governments have poor oversight on non-financial issues.   They can get awards for how pretty and accurate their annual financial reports (CAFR's) are, but there might not be any reports showing efficiency, effectiveness or oversight to prevent corruption.  In Lake County, the controller and "auditor" are in the Court Clerks office and neither has authority to go into the County government or other Constitutional offices and review internal operations to improve efficiency, etc.   In corporations over $200-million, they usually have one or more internal auditors with a full charter to review any records or interview any employees and initiate audits on their own.

Search the internet for public internal audit reports by local governments on the issue you are concerned with.   For instance, you might find just one Florida Auditor General performance audit on the specific function (like CRA's), and it will give you ideas of what system procedures should exist in your local departments to prevent fraud, waste & abuse.   it is my opinion that most local government officials and staff have no clue how to implement fraud detection and efficiency tracking systems like business has, so you have to find articles of screwups elsewhere to point out local improvements are needed.

Research the corruption in Boca Raton and Palm Beach County.   It was so bad the citizens led a referendum to create an independent Inspector General, who is now issuing some reports and has authority to initiate investigations in all the cities, school districts as well as County operations.

Try to initiate getting a petition to create a similar Inspector General for your County.

 

If the targets of your questions get federal funds, then you could find out which department they get funds from, and send complaints to the Inspector General for that Federal Department.

You might also create a blog like I did at FiscalRangers.com , and report this stuff in the blog with copies to all elected officials.  Then give public input at public meetings and they start listening to you.  I have been doing it for six years.  I also send copies to about 30 press members – in the County, in the nearby major TV market (Orlando) and also to key press people (print, tV and online blogs) in Tallahassee.   This has helped start stories, such as several articles all over Florida about our initiative to reform the North Lake County Hospital District and then get HB-1299 passed to reform it.   That bill was signed last Friday by Gov. Scott. 

If there are Florida government committees of appointed officials, send email copies of articles to them.  I did that with Gov. Scott’s Commission to review the Hospital Districts in Florida, and several of my suggestions made it into their recommendations (and into HB-1299).

Also, if you can get Tea party or other public groups to attend a key local government meeting like County Board meetings or the annual meeting of the County legislators forum, with signs, etc.  – it gets on the TV and also shows officials they can’t keep avoiding your issue.

Attend Tea Party and other groups and give presentations, with a list of actions for them, such as three questions to ask politicians running for office this year on local corruption examples and what they would do to fix it.   Video them, and post it on websites or YouTube, so you have it in case they do not follow through.

Elect smarter officials.  It is hard to get an official who is a high school graduate to spend time to understand governance issues, etc.   Many don't even read documents given to them by staff.   The more educated the official is, the less they might be open to corruption plus they are used to reading professional reports and would understand your issues better.  If they have a Master's degree and some type of professional certification or license, that is even better, because they have been exposed to ethics policies, etc.

The key is to keep bringing up your recommendations publicly – using public input, website, blog, emails, Facebook page, send to press, send to elected officials, get people to attend meeting with signs and give public input.   Once they know you are watching and asking questions, some officials might start backing  your efforts to improve transparency, accountability and oversight.

I even got the local County Board to hire outside auditors to review the local EMS rather than use an inexperienced auditor in the Court Clerk’s office. 

You can call me at anytime to discuss this.

 

Vance Jochim

Lake County Fiscal Rangers

Chief Fiscal Watchdog

Volunteers Searching for Ways to Improve Local Government Fiscal Management, Efficiency & Effectiveness

PO Box 1042

Tavares, FL 32778

Mobile:  352-638-3578

FiscalRangers@comcast.net

www.FiscalRangers.com   

TWITTER:  @FiscalRangers 

Fiscal Ranger's page on Facebook

CLICK HERE to see recommended internet links related to Local Lake County government fiscal issues.

 

 

We Launch Campaign to Get Serono Labs officers Prosecuted

We normally focus on Lake County or related local government issues.

This issue doesn't really affect most regular Lake County Fiscal Rangers readers, but if you want to see details of what can be done with social media to get government to actually prosecute wrongdoers, instead of just paying a fine, read on.

I am separately involved in research related to a new "CCSVI" treatment for multiple sclerosis - MS (I don't have it).   This week, the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) posted a press release about a drug company Serono Labs, that had paid unreported bribes and other expenses for many doctors to market an MS drug called Rebif. The press release said bribery, money laundering and kickbacks were involved to get doctors to push Rebif to MS patients.   Most MS drugs are REALLY expensive and many prescriptions are paid by Medicare or Medicaid, thus the Federal involvement.

DOJ issued a press release that they had settled with Serano paying a fine of $40-million, but NO officers were prosecuted.   This has upset the MS "community" evidenced by many postings on MS related Facebook pages around the world, especially since Serono was the subject of an earlier prosecution that resulted in them paying a $705-million fine.  So, they weren't naive.

Since I understand the Federal investigations systems, I have launched a campaign via Facebook to generate MS community, public and Federal Congressional pressure to have an investigation why DOJ did not prosecute anyone.   I even called the specific US Attorney's office that settled the case, and they would not explain why there were no prosecutions.  I am learning more details, and the US Dept of Health & Human Services Inspector General's office told us that the CEO and other officers may be subject to being added to an "exclusion" list which means they cannot be affiliated with any organization that receives Federal payments for Health services (i.e. Medicare reimbursements to clinics, etc.).  Another wrist slap - they can still collect parachute funds and retire without problem.

So, if you have further interest, you can visit my separate Facebook page "CCSVIUSA" and in the Notes will be a document containing the Serano Labs case details as it unfolds.   The interesting thing is that using Facebook Page Notes, you can post an article on Facebook that goes out to selected groups and pages, and mine went to about 130,000 MS patients.

Read the note here:

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=160462850683248  

vj

National Legal & Policy Center Tracks SEIU & Other Union Corruption Cases

We periodically read about union leaders running amok and stealing union funds or committing other transgressions.  In 2009 and earlier, many unions like SEIU were found to be affiliated with ACORN.

And, here is an organization, the National Legal & Policy Center, that TRACKS union corruption and crimes. Below is a link just to a search on the SEIU union, which is a national union, but they are the union for non-instructional workers at Lake County School Systems.  The search report lists the pages and pages of listings of crimes committed by SEIU members across the country.

No corporation would have such a track record among their branches or stores, but it seems the SEIU tolerates these antics and doesn't implement stronger policies and procedures to keep the crooks out. 

I don't have any evidence of wrongdoing in the local SEIU at the Lake County School District, but if I was a Lake County member of SEIU, would I be comfortable providing my support and dues to a national union with the constant problems listed at the link below? (or just go to www.nlpc.org and find the reports and search on SEIU )

http://www.nlpc.org/category/keywords/service-employees-international-union-seiu

vj

Ethnic Based Medicare Fraud Spreading from Miami to rest of US

One of the drains on public funds that reduces funding for local government is Medicare fraud.  South Florida is the home of Medicare Fraud, and it extends North.  This article below talks about how much of it is now related to "home health care" scams, and is run by ethnic minority groups.  So, as illegal aliens increase in Lake County, the chances of various illegal activities increases. 

Baltimore Mayor Convicted of Embezzlement

One of the reasons that some elected officials get tied up in financial fraud is a tendency of entitlement after they have won or have been in office awhile.

I call this a tendency to confuse social confidence with result oriented competence.  A results oriented elected official obtains satisfaction from accomplishments, but a visual image or power oriented official obtains satisfaction from what they get when in office, and sometimes anything goes.

So, here, the Baltimore Mayor, Sheila Dixon, was convicted of embezzlement for SOLICITING gift cards from local developers "for the needy" and

Palm Beach FL County Recovering from String of Corruption Charges

Palm Beach County has been going through a string of corruption investigations since January of this year, and now they are establishing an ethics office AND an Office of Inspector General.

I would rather have a beefed up internal audit department.  As the article mentions, the IG will be selected by a panel of attorneys and law enforcement people, without any auditors involved.  Thus what happens is the focus will be to hire an attorney, probably a former prosecutor, whose focus will be on after the fact investigations, and not prevenention.  Attorneys do NOT know how to define internal controls nor are they oriented to spending time to review systems and recommend improvements.  Instead, their mode of operations is to use a fraud reporting hotline to get tips, or setup stings, rather than implement preventive or detection programs to prevent corruption from happening.

That is what a good internal audit department would do, and that is why that is what they need, not another attorney.   Read the article at the link below.
vj

New York Audit Finds Dead Still Collecting Medicaid Payments

This case illustrates how, even at the State level, fraud continues to occur because government officials do NOT implement sound enough business controls to prevent fraud.

In this case, New York State Medicaid auditors found 417 dead people and 912 prison inmates still receiving Medicaid payments even though neither group is supposed to get them.

Officials said 296 of the death cases have been closed and $1.7million recovered from providers, like nursing homes.

Thus, it seems that nursing homes can continue to bill for medicaid for dead patients, and prisons apparently have no downside in failing to report new prison inmates to the Medicaid system so they can be dropped from the rolls.

In my 18 years of government and corporate audit experience, the biggest problem was always that some bureaucrat was not following procedure or using professional level control procedures to prevent such improper payments.  In this case, the nursery homes should be fined twice the overpayments, and the prisons should be billed for the overpayments since neither group followed procedures to minimize the fraudulent payments.

Tough love is needed in government.

Favorite Quote from the article at the link below:

Okay, maybe you're dead or in prison, but it's not all bad news: You may still be collecting Medicaid.

This Medicaid problem compares to the situation in three recent audits at the Lake County School District, which paid for a mentor program improperly, and overpaid a contractor, and allowed someone to manually override payroll systems to overpay staff after they were demoted.  Each of those findings exceeded $500,000 but I don't believe any recoveries have yet been announced.   Lake County officials and staff need to start acting on collection actions like it was their own money, and not "free" money from the taxpayers.
vj

Hawaiian Grass Roots Group to Hire Corruption Investigation Reporter

It is sometimes interesting to use the search term "corruption" in a database or website and see what comes up.

Doing so in the national employment database www.PrimeCB.com (run by CareerBuilder), I found the following ad for an investigative reporter to research corruption and government management issues in Hawaii for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.

The purpose of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is to improve the relationship between the government and the people with the objective of improving the effectiveness of the government, the business climate and in some cases, tradition, to foster an atmosphere in Hawaii that results in maximum personal freedom for every individual. We recognize that personal freedom comes with the price of personal responsibility, accountability and respect for others. We believe each person must be free to succeed or fail in building wealth and in relationships with others.

Mission

The mission of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is to promote   individual   liberty, the free market and limited accountable government.   Through   research papers, policy briefings, commentaries and conferences,   the   Institute seeks to educate and inform Hawaii's policymakers, news media   and   the general public. Grassroot Institute is a member of the State Policy Network, Townhall.com, Americans for Tax Reform, The Sam Adams Alliance and more. 

See their website at:  http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/

The Institute also created "Grassroot TV", which is a new area on the popular YouTube.com video web site featuring videos relating to public issues in Hawaii and beyond, as well as statements from the Institute on various concerns facing our communities. We have new videos up at Grassroot TV!

                  

• Price Tag of the   Hawaii Legislature: Putting the Cost of a Con-Con in   Perspective
• GRIH Press Conference:   New Native Hawaiian Study

                  

They also loaded up the library at the online TV station with new videos from The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and more. We are also looking for more videos and ideas for the new site.  Please visit 'Grassroot TV' at http://www.youtube.com/user/GrassrootHawaii.

I know I am going to review their website for ideas.  It seems the Institute might have libertarian leanings, which isn't bad, since they believe in small government.

Click the link below to see the ad.
vj

New Report Says NonProfit organizations Lose $40-billion from Fraud

I have been saying that government agencies, and other institutions, like non-profit charities, have avoided businesslike controls that would help identify fraud or corruption. Well, here is a report using data from the Association of Fraud Examiners, that says the amount lost from fraud in non-profits is huge - like $40-billion out of the $300-billion per year given to non-profit organizations.

The article also describes a new IRS question on non-profit tax filing forms for 2008 that requires them to disclose instances of fraud and embezzlement.

Favorite quote:

But what is getting the attention of nonprofit leaders is the report’s estimate of the overall cost, which the authors put at $40 billion for 2006, or some 13 percent of the roughly $300 billion given to charity that year.

“It’s a surprisingly large number,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who does surveys of public confidence in charities. “We really need to take a good hard look at what’s going on in these organizations.”

vj

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from NY Times at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/us/29fraud.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&WT.mc_id=GN-P-E-FB-WI-TXT-ME1-X-X-0000-NA&WT.mc_ev=click&oref=slogin

March 29, 2008
Report Sketches Crime Costing Billions: Theft From Charities
By STEPHANIE STROM
The volunteer treasurer of the Madison County Humane Society in Indiana was charged this month with using $65,000 of the charity’s money to buy jewelry and makeup. In San Francisco, the chief financial officer of the Music Concourse Community Partnership was fired after he was accused of taking $3.6 million of the organization’s money to play the stock market.

Nonprofit leaders tend to shrug off such cases as evidence of “just a few bad apples.” But a new report, trying to identify the scope of such thefts for the first time, suggests otherwise.

The report, by four professors who specialize in nonprofit accounting, found that the typical theft from a charity was committed by a female employee with no criminal record who earned less than $50,000 a year and had worked for the nonprofit at least three years. The amount she stole was less than $40,000.

The most costly cases, the study found, involved male executives earning $100,000 to $149,000 a year. The thieves in such cases had typically been with the organization the longest.

But what is getting the attention of nonprofit leaders is the report’s estimate of the overall cost, which the authors put at $40 billion for 2006, or some 13 percent of the roughly $300 billion given to charity that year.

“It’s a surprisingly large number,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who does surveys of public confidence in charities. “We really need to take a good hard look at what’s going on in these organizations.”

The new report is based on data from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which, the report said, found that “all organizations,” whether government, for-profit or nonprofit, “lose on average 6 percent of their revenue to fraud every year.” Applying that percentage to nonprofits’ total 2006 revenue of $665 billion — donations, government payments and other income — the authors came up with the $40 billion estimate.

“Determining how much theft and embezzlement takes place has been the holy grail of the sector,” said Jack B. Siegel, a tax lawyer who specializes in nonprofit matters.

If the $40 billion figure is accurate, then the money lost to fraud equaled the combined giving by corporations and foundations in 2006, said Diana Aviv, president and chief executive of the Independent Sector, which represents nonprofit groups.

But Ms. Aviv expressed skepticism about the report, noting that it relied on the fraud examiners association’s estimate of overall fraud across all sectors, including government and corporate.

“They’re lumping all those sectors together, and it could be that the for-profit sector experiences a higher level of fraud, while the nonprofit sector and government experience lower levels,” Ms. Aviv said.

Nonetheless, she said, “even if the figure is $20 billion, that’s still a huge amount and needs to be addressed.”

The report, published in the December 2007 issue of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, found that losses to fraud among the 58 cases reported to the fraud examiners association in a random survey of nonprofits ranged from $200 to $17 million, with the median fraud costing $100,000.

“Most of these things are not caught by routine audits,” said Gary Snyder, who tracks nonprofit fraud in his newsletter, Nonprofit Imperative. “They’re usually done by someone in the financial area — the treasurer, the bookkeeper, the signer of checks — who knows how to avoid getting caught.”

Almost 95 percent of the reported frauds entailed loss of cash, and a majority of those involved false or inflated invoices, billing for expenses that were never incurred and check tampering.

“I gave a talk to a group of nonprofit executives a few weeks ago, and every single one of them had a fraud story to tell,” said one of the report’s authors, Janet S. Greenlee, an associate professor of accounting at the University of Dayton. “This has been going on for years, but there’s a feeling that it shouldn’t be discussed,” because of the effect it might have on donations.

Professor Greenlee — joined in the report by Mary Fischer of the University of Texas at Tyler, Teresa P. Gordon of the University of Idaho and Elizabeth K. Keating of Boston College — said the failure of organizations to punish those who steal from them was perhaps one of the biggest reasons for fraud in the sector. She said she had worked at organizations that refused to dismiss employees caught stealing.

Professor Light, at N.Y.U., said some 70 percent of respondents to a new survey among the general public thought charities wasted “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”

“Donors have already indicated,” he added, “that they don’t have a great deal of faith in the way these groups handle money.”

But it will now be harder for charities to hide fraud, because beginning with tax forms they must file for 2008, the Internal Revenue Service has added a question requiring them to disclose whether they have experienced theft, embezzlement or other fraud during the year.

“Not only will that eventually give us a much better idea of how widespread fraud is with these groups, it also gives them an incentive to have better financial controls,” said Mr. Siegel, the tax lawyer, who is credited with the idea of adding the question to the tax forms.

Mr. Siegel used to track cases of fraud among charities but “got bored,” he said, because there were so many of them.

Newspapers routinely report incidents of nonprofit fraud in their communities, but the amounts tend to be small and thus go unnoticed at a national level.

Mr. Snyder, the tracker of nonprofit fraud in his newsletter, said that through use of databases and other searches, he had stumbled across more than $700 million in fraud already this year among government agencies and nonprofits, including church-related organizations.

Asked about his favorite example of nonprofit fraud, Mr. Snyder was initially stumped.

“There are so many,” he said.

He eventually settled on the embezzlement of some $25 million from Goodwill Industries of Santa Clara County in California.

It started in the 1970s and continued until one of the participants blew the whistle in 1998. Merchandise donated to the organization was sold outside the Goodwill shops by the perpetrators, who kept the proceeds. One of the embezzlers committed suicide before arrest, and six others, all related, pleaded guilty, were fined and, in some cases, were sent to prison.

The thieves had given more than $800,000 to the organization’s president and chief executive, who parked the money in accounts in Switzerland, in Austria and on the Isle of Man and then escaped to Guatemala as investigators closed in, according to the authorities. Guatemala sent him home in 2003, but he ultimately pleaded guilty to only one charge — of tax evasion unrelated to the scandal at Santa Clara Goodwill — and walked out of the courtroom.

“I like that one,” Mr. Snyder said, “because it’s an extreme example of something typical: that no one gets in trouble for this.”

Professor Greenlee said she saw signs that charities were now trying harder to deal with fraud.

“They’re creating audit committees and adopting the provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley as best practices,” she said of the 2002 law that imposed stricter accountability on corporate governing, though not on charities.

“Boards are becoming tougher,” she said, “because they know that as fiduciaries, they are at risk of, at the very least, embarrassment.”

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Here is the source of the full 35 page research report:

http://nvs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/4/676

And here is an attachment of the full 35 page report:
Download nonprofit_fraud_keating_35pgs.pdf

Arizona County Manager Convicted of $630,000 Fraud

This conviction happened in Pinal County, Arizona in March, 2007 for fraud and embezzlement that started in 2000.

It seems the County manager used his authority starting in 2000 to take County fee payment checks and deposit them in a separate bank account he established, and spent the funds on himself. He used his authority to intimidate staff and ignored requests to close the bogus account.

He has to pay the funds back and may be spending up to 51 YEARS in prison.

Read the story for more... this guy was clearly a real con artist who thought he wouldn't be caught.

A good quote was from the attorney hired to investigate the fraud:

He said the case should send a message "to every government official: If they misuse public funds, they will be prosecuted."
vj
(Note: There was no mention of internal or external auditors - the case was discovered and expanded when the Sherrif's department investigated the County Manager's mis-use of $21,000 of county funds to buy personal firearms.)

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Here is a year end overview of the case, followed by an original article from March, 2007 with more details.

Pinal (Arizona) County manager is sentenced

In March, a judge sentenced former Pinal County Manager Stanley Griffis to 3½ years in prison for three counts of felony theft and fraud. Griffis used his financial expertise and position as a public official to steal more than $600,000 from the county. He bought rifles, remodeled his home and paid for two cars with the stolen funds.

The scandal shook up Pinal County and prompted public officials to update and revamp policies in an attempt to prevent future fraud.

from
http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/0308st-griffis03.html

Ex-Pinal manager admits fraud, to repay $600K

Dianna M. Náñez
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 8, 2007 04:13 PM

A public corruption inquiry that began with an investigation into former Pinal County Manager Stanley Griffis' misuse of $21,000 ballooned into a criminal indictment that left him pleading guilty to six felonies, agreeing to pay over half-a-million dollars in restitution and the possibility of serving up to 51 years in prison.

On Jan. 31, as part of a plea agreement, Griffis pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud, two counts of theft and one count of fraudulent tax preparation.

Griffis is scheduled to be sentenced on May 10 before Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Thomas O'Toole.
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The charges against Griffis were announced at a news conference Feb. 21 by former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, whom Pinal County contracted to lead the investigation. Romley said charges were not immediately announced because the court, at the request of Griffis' attorney's, allowed Griffis time to deal with health issues stemming from a recent heart bypass.

Griffis has agreed to pay $639,035 in restitution to Pinal County and the Arizona Department of Revenue.Griffis' criminal charges were based on four main areas of illegal activity. He stole funds from the Superstition Valley Transportation Project, filed his taxes illegally, received improper county reimbursements and cited false wages to increase his pension plan.

The largest portion of the theft, $426,800, was stolen from the transportation project, a plan that created a county account that would hold funds assessed from home developers to assist the rapidly growing county with road improvements. Developers were charged an assessment fee per roof in exchange for concessions such as early zoning and protection from future fee increases.

On Jan. 26, 2000, Griffis opened an illegal personal bank account in the name of the Superstition Valley Transportation Project. Deposits from construction companies, home developers and others were placed in the account.

Soon after opening the account, Griffis began making withdrawals for personal use. Romley said that when county officials uncovered the account, which legally should have been handled by the Pinal County Public Works Department, they instructed Griffis that it was illegal and must be closed. In April 2002, Griffis presented a final bank statement and a receipt for the final transfer of funds to the county.

But Romley's investigation showed Griffis did not close the account. Instead, he changed the address for the statement to be mailed to his post office box.

Griffis continued to deposit a total of $426,800 in Pinal County funds into the account until February 2004. Romley said that the Pinal County Board of Supervisors authorized his access to all county records and that his investigation found no wrongdoing by other Pinal County employees.

"Griffis led . . . using fear," he said. "He gave orders to people who did not benefit (from his theft) and made it clear there would be repercussions (if his orders were not followed)."

Romley said it is possible that one Pinal County employee was fired because he refused to follow Griffis' orders.

As part of the plea agreement, Romley agreed not to pursue charges against Griffis' son, who received a check for $5,000; his wife, who signed tax returns; and his daughter, who was given property by developer George Johnson. Romley said Griffis' daughter reported that she had entered an oral agreement to repay Johnson for the property.

Romley said his investigation may have uncovered other areas of corruption, which could involve "special favors" Stanley Griffis bestowed upon housing developers. Should this lead to any criminal misconduct, Romley said, the state Attorney General's Office would be responsible for the investigation.

Romley was retained by Pinal County to investigate Griffis' misappropriation of public funds after a Sheriff's Office investigation revealed Griffis spent $21,000 in county money on rifles and ammunition for personal use.

As a result of the sheriff's investigation, Griffis was placed on administrative leave and then retired in January 2006. That same month, Romley launched his investigation, during which he found other illegal activity by Griffis.

Romley expanded the investigation to include a review of about 30,000 finance documents, e-mails and other public documents. Romley sought help from the Arizona Attorney General's Office, Arizona Auditor General's Office and the Arizona Department of Revenue to conduct the extensive review.

"This was a very complicated investigation . . . (of Griffis') complicated schemes," Romley said. He said the case should send a message "to every government official: If they misuse public funds, they will be prosecuted."

He cited the importance of public records in his ability to indict Griffis. He rebuked Griffis' current claim before the Arizona Supreme Court that e-mails he wrote on his county computer were private and should not be subject to a public records request by The Arizona Republic.

"Public records are a checks and balance for government," Romley said. "The e-mails were key to this investigation."