EDITORIAL OOPS, THEY DID IT AGAIN LOCAL POLS PLEAD IGNORANCE OF EIDC SCANDAL.CAUGHT red-handed in a political scandal A political scandal is a scandal in which politicians or government officials engage in various illegal, corrupt, or unethical practices. A political scandal can involve the breaking of the nation's laws or plotting to do so. , members of the Los Angeles City Council  The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. , the county Board of Supervisors The examples and perspective in this article or section may represent an unduly geographically limited view of the subject.Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. The Board of Supervisors is the body governing counties in the U.S. , Mayor James Hahn For the Iowa politician, see . James Kenneth "Jim" Hahn (born July 3, 1950) is an American politician from the Democratic Party. He was the Deputy City Attorney (1975-1979), City Controller (1981-1985), City Attorney (1985-2001) and Mayor of Los Angeles, California and other elected city officials have all responded with a defense that can be summed up in one word: Oops. Yes, oops. Or, to expand: Oops, we didn't know that the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., on whose very board we sit, was using public funds to bankroll bank·roll n. 1. A roll of paper money. 2. Informal One's ready cash. tr.v. bank·rolled, bank·roll·ing, bank·rolls Informal our political campaigns. Oops, indeed. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says, ``None of us have a clue to what is going on.'' Councilman Dennis Zine offers a variation of the same line: ``I discovered in the news that I'm a member of the EIDC board, and I've never been informed of board meetings and any activities of the board.'' In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , we're not corrupt, just incompetent. It doesn't do much to inspire confidence in local government when its leaders' best defense is to claim massive ignorance. But with District Attorney Steve Cooley conducting a criminal investigation, the elected officials aren't so much looking to inspire confidence, but to save their hides. The defense they've put forth is as unbelievable as it is pathetic. It was city and county officials who created the EIDC in the first place for the purpose of combating the problem of runaway productions. They're the ones who authorized the nonprofit corporation nonprofit corporation n. an organization incorporated under state laws and approved by both the state's Secretary of State and its taxing authority as operating for educational, charitable, social, religious, civic or humanitarian purposes. to collect the fees for local movie shoots, and they're the ones charged - by themselves - with overseeing the EIDC's operations. Besides, even if local politicians shirked their duty to manage the EIDC, it's well known that they pay close attention to their campaign coffers. If they weren't around when the EIDC was cutting campaign checks, they certainly were there to cash those checks later, and that should have raised plenty of red flags. Ignorance is never an excuse for breaking the law, especially for lawmakers, and most especially for the highest-paid lawmakers in the country. If oops is their best defense, let them tell it to the jury. |
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