It’s not a crime for North Dakota state employees to use taxpayer funds to fly first class; run up hundreds of dollars in bar bills; pay for hotel rooms – then not use them; spend thousands to go to Tony Robbins seminars; pay millions to redo executive homes; drop twenty grand to go to the Presidential Inauguration; wasteful, indecent, unethical, but not illegal.
But a state employee can be convicted of a felony when his head of finance orders and pays for food for employee meetings and celebrations; discharged employees don’t pay back money they don’t owe; and the agency he runs provides employees with gift cards for motivational rewards – gift cards worth ten bucks each.
Oh, and the state employee, former state fund CEO Sandy Blunt never ordered, authorized, signed for, used, took, distributed, or otherwise handled any gift certificate. The program had been running for SIX years before Sandy arrived and the agency had a complete system running that did not include nor require his approval.
Unbelievable, but true.
That’s the situation in NoDak, where former state fund CEO Sandy Blunt was convicted of the crime for misusing more than $10,000, a sum that the prosecutor got to by adding up lots of flowers, cards, cakes, and sick leave (that had been acceptable when his predecessor authorized them) plus moving expenses paid to an employee who was fired (and, it turns out, didn’t have to pay anything back).
Yet somehow when the state university’s employees waste millions, it’s not a crime?
Can someone explain this? Anyone?
Sep
10
