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Friday, February 10, 2012
Investigation: 'Potential quid pro quo' in city department
by Kathleen Haley, published on January 25, 2010 at 10:40 PM
Storyline: Sacramento City Hall / Politics
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An investigation into the city’s development department has brought to light several new issues, including “potential quid pro quo,” according to a new report from the offices of the city attorney and city manager.
The city attorney’s office and Renee Sloan Holtzman Sakai, a third-party law firm, have been working together on an investigation into the development department’s approval of 35 building permits in a Natomas flood zone.
The offices of the city manager and the city attorney acknowledge in a recent report that the city broke federal rules by authorizing the permits.
The report lists new issues in the building division of the department such as “potential quid pro quo,” “demolition without CEQA review,” “non-compliance with city’s planning requirements” and “non-compliance with fee-deferral program.”
The report will go before the City Council Tuesday. The City Council could decide Tuesday that its audit committee should address the new issues. Councilmembers Ray Tretheway, Lauren Hammond, Steve Cohn and Robbie Waters sit on the audit committee.
In November, City Attorney Eileen Teichert said that “additional issues” surfaced when investigators were examining the Natomas permits. She also said that one of the additional issues was the Facilities Permit Program, a city permitting program, but she declined to talk about other concerns.
Read the report from the offices of the city attorney and the city manager here.
Photo by Anthony Bento.
Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_soil_shift_evacuation
Hm. Centex Homes...for some reason that name sounds familiar. Good thing there aren't any hills in Natomas, eh?
From putting homes in the flood basin at 20 foot depths, to selling out the public trust and allowing Nestle to bottle and sell our tap water, the money flows towards those with the lowest scruples and little or no conscience regarding the consequences. That's WHY we have permits and regulations. In Sacramento, they -- and the public they're meant to protect -- are treated as a joke.
This is the tip of the Natomas iceberg.
Oh, and Sacramentans are supposed to fall for a new shell game, where we give away vast, state/public owned property adjacent to a local/state/federally protected Wild and Scenic river parkway, to developers who want to use it for a NEW sprawling cash cow, now that they can't build in Natomas ...........
Oh! and while they propose the State Fair perching on that paltry spot in the suburbanized floodplain, (leaky landscape of oh so many broken promises), the same gang wants in on the Railyards project too.
It's a Win/Win/Win for those who know how to avoid public regulation and use public lands and public funds to enrich themselves.
This is a report by the City Attorney, who's job it is to protect the City by all means necessary.
Where is the ORGINAL report written by the outside law firm the City hired?
Oh, let me guess, it will NEVER be made pubilic, the City will claim it falls under the attorney-client privilidge.
This scandal is also chump change compaired to what has been going on at the Redeveloment Agency. Talk about quid pro quo... Tens of millions of free tax dollars in exchange for campaign contributions.