Walter Winchell, one of America’s most popular syndicated gossip columnists and radio commentators from the 1920s through the early 1960s once called West Haven, Connecticut “the most corrupt little city in America.”
Clearly there was a fair amount of hyperbole there – and we have no idea why he singled out West Haven (truth in advertising: it’s the hometown of Richard Greene, co-author of this piece).
But in recent years, it appears that West Haven has endured some problems which bring Winchell’s snide comment to mind. There are a few examples but the one which has achieved the greatest notoriety was the theft of more than $1.2 million in COVID relief funds by a Connecticut state representative who was also employed as administrative assistant to the city council of West Haven. As the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut explained in a release, “he conspired with others to steal these funds and other West Haven funds through the submission of fraudulent invoices, and subsequent payment, for COVID relief goods and services that were never provided.”
We bring this up not to bash West Haven, or to leave anyone with the idea that government is riddled with bad guys (anyone who reads our work knows we think quite the opposite) but to make the point that corruption isn’t exclusively the province of larger cities, but wrinkles its way into the life of smaller cities, as well.
A couple of years ago, we wrote a column in Route Fifty about Durango, Colorado. In that community, which is the biggest city in rural La Plata County and the location for a few key scenes in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the longtime finance director, resigned in October 2019 and subsequently pled guilty to two felony charges related to $712,000 in embezzled funds.
At the time, our research also led us to a fascinating documentary called, “All the Queen’s Horses.” That was all about a $53 million embezzlement that occurred over many years by the Dixon, Illinois comptroller, who worked in that small city (population currently about 15,000) from 1983 until her indictment in 2012. You can read our interview with the producer and director of the documentary, Kelly Richmond Pope, an accounting professor at DePaul University, here.
Apparently, no town is too small to be hit by corruption. Leyden, Massachusetts has a population of under 800. In April, a press release from the state’s Office of the Inspector General revealed that “following an investigation conducted by the Office of the Inspector General, Daniel J. Galvis, Leyden’s former Chief of Police, was arraigned in Greenfield District Court today on numerous charges related to items embezzled from the Town of Leyden.”
The problem in communities like these is frequently the lack of appropriate oversight. And though they may not have the kind of staff that large cities do, once taxpayer dollars are involved, keeping tabs on what’s being done with them is a clear duty that community leaders assume.
As a 2016 article from Columbia Law School explained, “While news headlines often focus on issues of corruption within state or federal governments, the effects of corruption within local municipalities is equally problematic. First, there are many thousands of small cities and towns in the United States, depending on one’s definition. And these governments receive and spend billions of dollars in public funds. For obvious reasons, however, small cities and towns typically operate with few employees, and have limited resources to expend on non-essential personnel and programs.
“This means that the very nature of small municipalities makes them susceptible to corruption, because their small size and workforce do not allow for the kind of oversight and enforcement mechanisms that larger cities, state governments, and the federal government can employ. Nor can small towns usually count on oversight from county-level or state oversight mechanisms, at least absent a specific complaint about egregious conduct that is deemed important enough for higher-level officials to pursue.”
There’s certainly truth to that, but it doesn’t mean that smaller communities can just run away from the battle because they don’t have a big enough army. As the city manager of Durango who took over after the scandal told us in an interview that followed the Route Fifty article, cities with smaller populations can model themselves on bigger cities and not view size as a barrier. “Some people who have not been in a bigger city have this shield. ‘Oh, no. Can’t do that. . . They have more resources than we’ll ever have.
“I think there’s ways where you can scale a lot of those things. I may not have a 30-member accounting department, but I have 15 and I can be able to do some things in a better way.
“I think sometimes the bravado of coming from a small town or representing a small town (makes us think) we can’t do it like bigger towns. There’s a lot of processes that are out there that I think you can definitely scale down so as not to be intimidated by the processes of bigger areas. Look at them and say. ‘What can I bring in?’"
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