By Bob Walsh
Ron Freitas (Laughing at the taxpayers - ed.)
Ron Freitas is the fairly newish ( 15 months in) District
Attorney of San Joaquin County. His election campaign spokesman was
Lee Neves / Cross-Currents LLC. They do a lot of that sort of work in
northern California so that was no big surprise. After he got elected
he hired the firm to do communications for the District Attorney's
office. (I thought that sort of thing was usually done in house.) The
contract specified payment of up to $7,000 per month. It didn't have to
go out for competitive bidding because it is, relatively speaking,
chump change.
However the
county actually paid Neves $270,000 over eight months. This is roughly
three times the amount that had been disclosed by the county and a hell
of a lot more than $7,000 per month.
It
seems that the county paid Neves the full $7,000 per month. The county
also paid about $220,000 for two public information campaigns for the
DA's office. One was to tell people Fentanyl is bad. The other was
to tell people that illegal fireworks are bad. The information received
by the local newspaper, THE RECORD, does not include exactly what these
information campaigns consisted of. Freitas has said that he will NOT
comment on the matter.
The
pay scale for the civil service DA public information officer is
between $72k and $88k per year including benefits. Most of the payments
to Neves for the Fentanyl program came from a gang and drug suppression
account. Payments for the fireworks campaign came from a restorative
justice fund.
1 comment:
Galveston County has a similar position that the County Judge calls his Chief of Staff. He is really a paid Republican Party vote getter for select persons being pushed by big money. He got a Sheriff's candidate elected in the primary that may not legally be able to hold the office and has possible TCOLE violations that could be criminal. (ABC)
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