EDITORIAL: A new crime for the books: Municipal theft
There have been a lot of such cases recently.
In Salisbury, a school board clerk stood accused of taking $110,000. Police say Lori A. Tompkins was skimming from school board accounts over a three-year period.
In New Hartford, a former tax collector and now her husband, have been accused of taking $10,000 in tax money from the town.
Most recently, $15,000 went missing from a Woodbury Fire Department account. Jonathan Schlesinger, 29, was arrested by police recently, and police say the thefts took place over the course of several months.
There have been other recent cases that might or might not apply. Patricia Barrios, for example, was charged with stealing $10,000 from the Torrington PTO.
Police are also investigating the loss of $1,000 from Cornwall Town Hall, though it is not being considered a criminal investigation yet.
This rash of municipal embezzlement is disturbing. However people feel about their municipal governments, about the services provided and the character of their elected officials, there at least needs to be the confidence that residents’ hard-earned money is not going to be stolen.
Wasted, maybe, but not stolen.
Most people charged with municipal embezzlement are not elected officials but political appointees and contractors, as in the three cases sited above. Political appointees and contractors are given tax money to dispense properly, and never went before voters for approval. They are trusted with the smooth running of our governments and, when they abuse that trust, should be made examples.
One might think that it is a question of hiring good people — that the administration officials who hire or appoint soon-to-be criminals “should have known.” But no one can see into the future. No one can look at a person and say, “I’m not going to hire her. She could steal $10,000 from the town in three years.”
Laws against and repercussions from such criminal activity should be harsher than other, similar crimes that might not involve tax dollars. Theft of municipal funds shakes the public’s confidence in their elected officials. It is a result from the theft that the law, currently, does not account for.
