Some excerpts from Roberts’ article, entitled County is proving corruption to be true:

After reading the report on how things work in the county’s Facilities Management Department, I’m thinking maybe Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his sidekick, former County Attorney Andrew Thomas, were on to something with all their talk of county corruption.

Eleven county employees have now been put on paid leave, the result of an internal investigation that started when one of the workers began having second thoughts about taking freebies after seeing so many of his concert-going colleagues in the skybox of a company that makes millions off its county contracts.

Meanwhile, Assistant City Manager Kenny Harris, who oversees Facilities, was fired this week. Though Harris was reportedly fired over an unrelated matter, the investigation found that he played in several golf tournaments as the guest of county vendors, including both the project manager and the builder of the county’s $340 million court tower — a construction project that he was supervising.

Yeah, that would be the court-tower construction project that Arpaio and Thomas were nosing around.

The investigative report outlines a culture in which freebies were routinely handed out to county employees who thought nothing of settling themselves into the luxury suites of the companies whose contracts they played a role in overseeing.

The king of the freebies was Dick Carr, who manages county construction projects. According to the report, Carr was treated to roughly 20 concerts over three years and a $4,000 trip in which he was helicoptered in to British Columbia, courtesy of a vendor. No doubt he was the biggest catch of the trip.

What they should do is simply outlaw all gifts to public employees. Period.

Nobody would be happier than the lobbyists, who tell me they are routinely hit up for freebies. At the Capitol and, apparently, at the county.

Where just a few months ago, we were scoffing at the idea of corruption.
Arizona Republic article