Health & Fitness
DinnerGate - Part 1 Concludes
“When you want to make a case you want to be sure you’re accurate.” Kathryn McCullough, June 3, 2014
We’ve been looking at Councilwoman McCullough’s claim that she is not a crook and so far we’ve established with certainty that she is a liar. On June 3 she made many claims about her behavior when traveling on City business, and when I checked these claims against the records in the City Clerk’s office, all the claims appeared to be false –
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MCCULLOUGH’S LIES
She claimed she didn’t ask the City to reimburse her for mileage, but she did this on nearly every single trip, to the tune of hundreds of dollars.
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She claimed she paid her husband’s taxes with City money as a way of compensating him for the bottled water and snacks he purchased for her, but we found many receipts for bottled water and snacks that she charged to the City.
She claimed that the only City money she spent on her husband was his shares of the taxes, but we found that she also routinely pays his share of the tip, his share of the service charges, and it looks like sometimes she gets the City to pay for his food. It also looks like she uses City money to pay his share of taxi and limousine rides
She claimed she only asked the City for $2 tip for baggage handling, but her record shows she asked the City to reimburse her $4, $5, $6 and sometimes $10 for tips.
She claimed that even if she asked for more than $2 per bag, the City would not pay her more than $2 per bag. But the City always paid her whatever she asked for.
She claimed she worked so hard for the City that she went all day without eating, but we found she rarely missed a meal, and sometimes she ate 4 meals a day at the City’s expense.
She claimed she was limited to a $50 per diem for meals, but the City has no limit for meals, and McCullough herself almost always charges more than $50 per day for meals, and on many occasions she ate more than $100 in a single day that the City had to pay for.
She claimed she ate “very very healthy” but we found numerous receipts for cheesecake, cheeze-its, buffalo wings, side orders of fries, etc.
This is not a pretty picture. Given what we already know about her propensity to lie, together with this new information, we have a picture of a compulsive liar that borders on pathological. But being a compulsive liar is not against the law (compulsive lying probably helps insure a long career in politics!) so in Part 2 of this investigation we'll see if her behaviors constitute breaches of the law, at least as defined in the City’s expense policy.
THE LEGAL CASE
Here are the issues we'll discuss next time -
- What does the City code prescribe?
- Which (if any) of McCullough's behaviors were in violation of the City's code?
- How many times did she violate the code and what are the total damages to the City?
- How and why did the City allow this to happen?
- What are the legal options available to the City?
- How do we prevent these abuses from occurring in the future?
