Other Election Issues

By Michael Di Giorgio

A few issue that have been in the news lately are covered.

The EPA raided the Novato Sanitary District and seized documents in a wide area of operations. The FBI accompanied them advising that this was a criminal investigation. An anonymous phone call had prompted the investigation. The entire board is anxious to learn what the problem was since we feel the district should take corrective action if only we knew what they were looking for. No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than your board. We have retained legal council for some employees so they are fairly represented. The NSD has retained Barge, Coffin, Lewis, and Trapp to help the district. As far as we can tell, they are looking at two possible plant violations in 2007. A few things are troubling me. Why has the anonymous caller waited 2 years? The timing being in the middle of the contract operations dispute seems peculiar.

The Theft of funds. The NSD operates three business bank accounts, one for payroll, one fo operations and one for a specific project. During the period between April 16th and April 20th a number of unauthorized payments were made by the Bank of Marin in a total amount of $514,543.45. Of that amount $432,615.91 has been recovered. NSD is pursuing return of all of the remaining funds and is confident that the outstanding remainder will be recovered. Two accounts were affected by these fraudulent transfers. The operating account was set up for individual electronic transaction of no more than $1,500 per transaction. All of the fraudulent transactions exceeded that amount. The fraudulent transfers happened in the early AM of the days when there was no one at NSD. They had different IP addresses, and the absence of written authorization forms from NSD, the transactions were authorized by the Bank. NSD hired a forensic computer company to ascertain if there was any potential breach of security to NSD's computer system or the two employees authorized to transfer funds. The hard drives were removed and it was determined that there was an absence of any malicious covert channel of operations and no login at the time of the crimes. The investigation eliminated the potential use of NSD's computers in initiating any of the fraudulent transactions. NSD has further learned that 3 other commercial companies in Marin were hit at the same time. Negotiations continue with the Bank and we expect to recover all monies.

The Referendum. NSD has taken steps to plan for the possible override of the Board's vote to hire an outside contractor to start up the new plant. The law firm of Shute, Mihaly and Wienberger is the legal council for the petition and is being funded in part by California Healthy Communities in Martinez. It is NSD's position that the decision is not referendable since the legislative action to negotiate a contract was made on 7/27 and the thirty days has passed. In addition, State law gives NSD the right to enter into contracts. The election could cost you, the tax payers over $250,000 to hold and the emergency contract will cost $800,000 more per year than the original one. If overturned, the new consultant fees will cost $22 million over five years versus the $15 million with Veolia. The will be no guarantees of power usage, and all fines, if any will be paid by NSD and it's rate payers.