wow. Philly Foibles,
So who will climb up the "corporate ladder"? Will they go outside like the should since the one guy who would have been rumored to have been best moved onto another job already? Any calls on who might be batter up next and are they good?

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L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers/Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.–Jean Jacques Rosseau. The Social Contract, 1762

I had Rutty berate me over the telephone for complaining about abusive behavior by a Radnor cop. Former township solicitor Blake then sent me an extremely threatening letter just because I complained about that bad cop. There is much MUCH more to this, but I won't go into it just yet.

However, here is an email I sent to the Radnor commissioners about two months ago:

Fw: [7] Corruption in Lower Merion and Montgomery County
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:44 AM
From:
To: , , , , ,

Radnor Commissioners:

I wanted to fill you in on what I have been up to in my hometown of Lower Merion and in Montgomery County.

Best to scroll down and read bottom-up to get the chronological order.

The reason I am filling you all in (please forward this to Spingler as he does not have an email address on the Radnor website) is because when I am finished with Lower Merion and Montco, I will be doing the same for Radnor and Delco.

Realize hundreds of people in Lower Merion are blind copied on the below. Outside of friends and the proper county and state officials, I have hundreds of blind copy emails addressed in Lower Merion to the various civic group websites, the Democrat and Republican committees that list emails for all their committee people, and any website that has anything to do with Lower Merion from a business or community standpoint. These emails are flying all over the place.

You can read about my concerns in Lower Merion which have and which will touch a little on Radnor.

However, I will be going into great detail in the same fashion as in the below emails regarding Radnor and Delco, and particularly in regards to Bashore, Blake, Detective Cory, former District Justice Foster and former Delco Common Pleas Judge Wright. I will also speak to misconduct by Rutty.

As with the below emails, which are not finished yet, the ones for Radnor/Delco will be properly addressed to D.A. Green and blind copy scores of members of the press on a local, county and regional level.

Assuming Rutty is gone, I am personally pleased to see that every corrupt public "servant" I mentioned in the above email is now history.

If Lower Merion township and its commissioners and Montco D.A. Risa Vetri-Ferman only had an ounce of moral fiber they would have long ago gotten rid of corrupt cops, a corrupt yet highly praised former police chief, a corrupt district justice, a corrupt township solicitor and corrupt commissioners.

Instead, corrupt government agents and crooked public servants in Lower Merion get rewarded by the Lower Merion commissioners.

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Brotherhood of Thieves ~ As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Carla—We had some issues a couple of years ago that involved working with the police and I found Rutty (and the force in general) to be very professional, competent, open and working consistently to serve the public. No problems, which is saying a lot considering.

As to, "it is reported" / "it is rumored status" of the story, it seems to me we are at the point where the working press has to nail down the rumors and get more people on the record. Sam Strike did a good job this week but the Inky just mailed it in.

Most of the bloggers on this site put forth raw and unattributed info for the group's consideration and to act as catalyst for action but, at this point, it's in everyone's interest to try to get as much on the record as possible. I am concerned that most of the rumors seem to be coming from a single questionable source in the township building, who reads these blogs, and has an ax to grind.

FYI: I did a RTK for the Neil Morris investigative report to the Radnor Board of Commissioners. It'll be redacted and I am sure that they will drag their feet producing it but, I'll post it as soon as I get it. Additionally, the forensic audit should be complete soon so I'll request that and post it too.

Carla:

I don't Anne Minicozzi at all, but I found her recent editorial to be a disgrace.

As a preliminary note, while I try to keep an open mind, I personally think that any editorial that attempts to draw parallels between the legendary Radnor Township Manger Bob Crofford with the notorious (and recently terminated) Dave Bashore (which Ms. Minicozzi does), is likely to be specious. In my opinion, the only way Bob Crofford should be compared with Dave Bashore is via a contrasting analysis. Ms. Minicozzi's editorial did nothing to change my beliefs; rather, her editorial reinforced them.

At a minimum, Ms. Minicozzi demonstrates in her editorial that she has absurdly low expectations for the next Radnor Township Manager. Namely, Ms. Minicozzi is hopeful that the new Manager will be able to "[w]ork together with the community" and will have a "warm and engaging" personality. If Ms. Minicozzi prioritizes those kinds of "warm n' fuzzy" characteristics to such a degree that she feels they are worthy of mention in an editorial printed in the local paper of record, she might as well mention that the new Township Manager should, preferably, have a pulse.

In Radnor, we are currently experiencing a three million dollar ($3,000,000.00) shortfall, and are coming off a scandal in which the former manager, Dave Bashore, is alleged to have, among other things, helped himself to thousands of dollars in unauthorized taxpayer-funded bonuses. In my opinion, Radnor desperately needs a Township Manager that is accountable, honest, forthcoming with information, fiscally disciplined, creative (so that we can get out of the shortfall), responsive, and fastidiously loyal to his/her employer: the citizens and taxpayers of Radnor Township. With all due respect to Ms. Minicozzi, things like "Unity Breakfasts", and singing the lyrics to a Coca Cola commercial, while important, are not top priorities.

Here is another portion of Ms. Minicozzi's editorial, that you did not include, which particularly irritated me:

With the capstone event being a gala ball held at Ardrossan, with attendees including my husband and myself dressed in Edwardian attire rented from Stern’s Costumes formerly of Wayne, it was an elegant and wonderful celebration of our township.

I do not wish to be dismissive, but I could really care less that Ms. Minicozzi and her husband got decked out in period attire and hung out with, among other people, Dave Bashore and other Radnor Township staff. The fact that people in Radnor, like Ms. Minicozzi, are able to have a good time with Dave Bashore, Superintendent Linda Grobman, and other Township employees at receptions and parties, is completely irrelevant to whether these employees can capably perform their jobs...which involve tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.

In answer to your direct question, if Dave Bashore committed the acts that the bipartisan Board of Commissioners unanimously found him to have committed (via two separate resolutions), then he is the antithesis of a professional. Accordingly, the fact that Ms. Minicozzi has attempted to elevate the embattled Dave Bashore to the incontrovertible professionalism exhibited by Bob Crofford (who is dead and cannot respond to her dubious comparison) is, at best, profoundly misguided. I say "at best", because I do not think Ms. Minicozzi's failure to note the controversy surround Dave Bashore was an oversight. Rather, it appears that Ms. Minicozzi has taken considerable pains to avoid mentioning that Dave Bashore was suspended and terminated, by her use of the following phrase (which was made without qualifiers or an explanation):

while Mr. David Bashore was our township manager

A reader unfamiliar with the issues surrounding Dave Bashore would, after reading Ms. Minicozzi's editorial, be led to believe that (a) Dave Bashore was, irrefutably, a consummate professional, (b) Dave Bashore is merely no longer the Township Manager (as opposed to being the recently suspended and terminated Township Manager), and (c) the next Township Manager should share the traits exhibited by Dave Bashore. While Ms. Minicozzi is certainly entitled to these beliefs, she is not entitled to mislead readers about Mr. Bashore's highly controversial recent past.

In sum, I feel that Ms. Minicozzi has done a tremendous disservice to the readers of the Main Line Suburban Life, and hopefully the paper's readers (and editors) will call on her on it in next week's issue.

Here is a comment I left for Philly Foibles & thank you to that blog for updating us:

How much is healthcare for life? Any actuarial folks around? (Wow, would I love that perk, right?)

And let's review Lower Merion history. If memory serves in between whenever the previous Lower Merion Township Manager disappeared and Doug Cleland appeared, didn't they give THEN Supt. of Police Joe Daly a shot? As some sort of interim manager? And then they gave the job to Cleland?

Running a township and running a police department are different things I think, don't you?

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L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers/Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains.–Jean Jacques Rosseau. The Social Contract, 1762

I already guessed and posted that the commissioners would be wooing Rutty back, but in my view he is no golden boy.

As for all these cops retiring and getting huge pensions while the township then has to hire more cops and pay them on top of paying out these hefty pensions (plus lifetime healthcare for people who retire in their forties like Carla mentioned), I have made my views Very Clear On This. And why does sick pay get accrued? We don't see that in the real world - the private sector.

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Brotherhood of Thieves ~ As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.