Posted by
Katy Grimes on Monday, April 06, 2009 12:05:01 AM
Sacramento's Child Protective Services has been exposed several times for being completely negligent in the deaths of many children. And now the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors wants 90 days to make a decision about what to do. What exactly will change in 90 days?
Perhaps their political consultants will have time to do damage control in the meantime, and prevent them from being hurt by their lack of oversight, and lack of action when presented with the gross negligence, particularly by the head of CPS, Lynn Frank. This woman should be drawn and quartered... or at least publicly flogged for her inattention to the very singular purpose of her job. That is gross negligence.
Doesn't this sound familiar? Remember Ann Marie Gold... the head of the Sacramento County Library who allowed gross spending negligence and collusion to take place right under her nose, even after being alerted by an employee. She was not terminated and the local media stopped reporting about her and the Supervisors, who did nothing about her. The Sacramento County Grand Jury investigated Gold. While no children died, their report lays out many of other concerns with library management, including:
• Credit card abuses.
• Questionable travel expenses.
• Excessive use of consultants.
• $2.5 million in uncollected fines.
The Sacramento County grand jury also found a lack of oversight by the 14-member board that governs the fifth-largest library system in the state.
But the report's harshest findings focus on Library Director Anne Marie Gold. The report found that Gold ignored library employees who tried to warn officials of the alleged billing and kickback plot.
Gold and other administrators "failed to adequately safeguard public funds." (sacbee.com)
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors had her sign a separation agreement, paid her $25,000 in exchange that she would not sue the board. Are you kidding? They should have sued her for gross negligence of the fiscal responsibility for the library.
And now we have Child Protective Services, exposed for the same gross negligence, by the same type of bureaucrat. How can these people show up everyday and receive information from their employees and not act on it? CPS actually performed a cover up of details with several of the child deaths.
In today's Sacramento Bee, District Attorney Jan Scully wrote an op/ed about the deplorable situation at CPS and made a few recommendations Jan Scully: CPS should use its tools – and then some - Sacramento ...
Sacramento County Sheriff John McGinnis is in agreement with Scully - they have to respond to the domestic violence calls and pursue the scum bags who hurt and kill children. And yes, that is the basis of their individual jobs, but CPS does not need to make it harder by neglecting their core responsibilities. That is negligence.
Local politicians who behave as politicians when they need to respond responsibly need to be removed from office. The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors are as negligent as the worst CPS employees by not acting on the information in the reports available to them.
And as with the library story, I am confident that the local media will cease to report any further - once the investigative award has been received, story's done...
or not. I will be on it. As Paul Harvey always said, let's get to "the rest of the story..." Political damage control should always take a back seat when babies are dying, public funds are being stolen and lives are being compromised.