Neese pulling double duty as Pratt mayor, police chief yields fine, prohibition from public office

CHARLESTON - Former Pratt mayor Ann Neese must repay town officials $7,000 and pay a $500 fine for violating state ethics rules, the state Ethics Commission ruled this week.

Neese resigned as mayor in August. In June, she resigned as Pratt's interim police chief, a job she had been holding since 2006.

Ethics officials said Neese appointed herself interim police chief in April 2006, after the town's former police chief resigned suddenly. That summer, officials for the state Ethics Commission told Neese she could not be both mayor and police chief at the same time, but Neese replied she was only acting as police chief until she could hire someone else to fill the job.

Neese made $400 a month as mayor, but reported working more than 3,000 hours of overtime as police chief between 2006 and her resignation in June. Ethics officials said Neese made $34,118 as police chief in 2006, $29,200 as police chief in 2007 and $16,128 in the first half of 2008.

"From summer 2006 through January 2008, the Ethics Commission's staff clearly and repeatedly advised [Neese] that she could not serve both as mayor and police chief without violating the Ethics Act," ethics officials wrote.

Members of the ethics commission voted on Feb. 7 to initiate an ethics complaint against the former mayor. Neese resigned as police chief in June, saying her resignation had nothing to do with ethics proceedings. She resigned as mayor in August.

Ethics officials ruled Thursday that Neese would have to pay back the town $7,000 for unauthorized overtime and pay the ethics commission a $500 fine.

She was also prohibited from holding public office or working for any municipality for 10 years.

Neese declined comment on Friday, referring to a four-page response she filed with the ethics commission.

In her response, Neese said she thought she was acting legally while serving as interim police chief. Neese said she was trying to honor a promise to the citizens of Pratt to provide 24-hour-a-day police protection.
She also said she was deeply affected by the deaths of her mother and aunt within a month of one another in 2007.

"After the death of my mom, I went through the motions of working, but I had no concept of time or date," Neese wrote. "It took all I had to get through the day and night. I remembered that my job was to protect and serve the citizens of Pratt, and on that I did not waver....

"I thought I was doing what was best for Pratt.... To have acted with love for Pratt and those wonderful people who supported me leaves me with sadness that I did not get to complete the job to which I was elected."

This story originally appeared in the Nov. 14 edition of The Charleston Gazette, and is reprinted with permisison.

Are universities above the law?

by Peter Berkowitz

Three lawsuits--against Dartmouth College and Duke and Princeton universities--may be the best things to happen to higher education in decades. The Dartmouth suit, though recently withdrawn, focused attention on the role of alumni in college affairs. The Duke case raises the question of the extent to which courts will require universities to observe their own rules and regulations. The Princeton case puts at issue the enforceability of restricted gifts. All three expose the often opaque governing structures under which colleges and universities operate and bring into focus the need for transparency and accountability in higher education.More than the scope of universities' legal responsibilities is at stake here. That's because upholding the rule of law on campus can contribute to the reform of university governance--and the reform of university governance is an indispensable precondition for the restoration of a liberal education -worthy of the name.

For more on this article, go to The Weekly Standard

Attack on Muslim student in Ill. deemed bogus; alleged victim charged

Elmhurst, Ill. - A Muslim student who said a masked gunman assaulted her after he wrote anti-Islamic slurs in a women's restroom at Elmhurst College was arrested Friday after an investigation concluded the attack never happened.

A week after the case roiled the small college, Elmhurst Police Chief Steven Neubauer said Safia Jilani, 19, of Oak Brook had been booked on a felony charge of filing a false police report, which is punishable by 1 to 3 years in prison.

Jilani reported Oct. 9 that the man beat her with the gun in the college's science center, authorities said. Anti-Muslim graffiti was written on the wall, similar to a threat written on the same student's locker the previous week.

For more on this story, go to The Chicago Tribune. Also, for a moralizing, self-serving commentary reacting to the now-bogus attack, go to The Leader, EC's student newspaper, and EC's Website.

Inflation, and the bailout, simplified

Chronicle of Higher Education seeking academic freedom reporter

JournalismJobs.com and MediaBistro.com have posted a job opening in academic-freedom journalism being advertised by The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The successful candidate for this full-time, Washington, DC-based position will demonstrate enthusiasm for and knowledge of the debates over academic freedom roiling college and university campuses; how campus politics affect professors' ability to teach and do research; and how religion, politics, and activism affect tenure, research, academic publishing, and faculty governance.

He or she will scoop the competition at breaking news, write insightful analyses that connect the dots, and develop enterprising features that advance stories and set The Chronicle apart. Applicants should have 5–10 years of relevant experience and a demonstrated ability to break news and meet daily assignments as well as to generate ideas and produce mid- and long-range feature stories.

Job applicants should send a cover letter, resume, and at least three clips to: Josh Fischman, Senior Editor, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1255 23rd St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037 or you can email those materials, including clips (no links to clips, please) to josh.fischman@chronicle.com. The subject line of the email should read "Job Applicant." NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE

What Andrew Jackson might say about the bailout

by James P. Pinkerton

“You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”

Today I turn over my space to Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, who said these fiery words to a delegation of bankers in 1832:

“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”

The issue back then was the Bank of the United States, a federally chartered institution—sort of a predecessor to the Federal Reserve—that Jackson, ever the populist, strongly opposed. Today, most people agree that a national bank is necessary, but as today’s vote demonstrates, there is no national consensus on transferring wealth from the middle to the top. Good! Let’s hope that principle holds true for a while longer.

Today, the same as back then, big bankers attempt to blackmail America: If you don’t do things our way, exactly as we tell you, then the roof will cave in.

For more on this commentary, go to The Fox Forum

The 4-1-1 on a 9-1-1 rip-off in N.Y.

Syracuse, N.Y. - The cell phone bill says "9-1-1 Service Fee": $1.20. You pay it every month to New York state.

But only 6 cents end up at a 911 center.

Instead, the state spends the money on itself: overtime, fringe benefits, travel, vehicles, new boots, clip-on ties, sun block, spray paint, groceries, dry cleaning and other daily expenses for agencies ranging from the state police to the departments of corrections and parks, state records show.

The National Guard, for example, spent almost $1 million at Oswego's Best Western Captain's Quarters hotel and steak and seafood restaurant and the Econo Lodge Riverfront Inn. That housed and fed up to 21 soldiers who patrolled the nuclear power plants for three years after Sept. 11, 2001.

The state imposed the fee to raise enough money to upgrade 911 technology so dispatchers can find you when you call from your cell phone and can't talk.

For more on this story, go to The (Syracuse) Post-Standard

Report finds U. of Iowa mishandled '07 sex assault, cover-up downplayed

Coralville, Iowa -- An independent report presented to the Iowa state Board of Regents on Thursday said the University of Iowa mishandled a sexual assault investigation and criticized two UI vice presidents for their roles but rejected the idea there was a cover-up.

The Stolar Partnership, a St. Louis-based law firm that compiled the 72-page report, said several other key officials, including Athletics Director Gary Barta, football coach Kirk Ferentz and UI President Sally Mason, by and large followed UI policies in both practice and spirit.

"The university's response to the alleged sexual assault was inadequate. While the substance of the response was not acceptable, there was no cover-up or attempted cover-up and no pressure to deal with it informally," lead investigator James Bryant said in his presentation.

Bryant went on to say the alleged victim "suffered intolerable harassment and bullying despite the coaches' efforts."

For more on this story, go to the (Iowa City) Press-Citizen

Is Chili Mac next on the list of bailouts?

By S.J. Masty

Tomorrow, After Lunch - The epic nationalization of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is expected to cost taxpayers "between $50 billion and $500 billion" or more, say economists abandoning pocket calculators for a dartboard.

Next, Lehman Brothers sold the cow for a handful of magic beans and were allowed to collapse. But it is an election year, government's heels are rounder than usual, so it may not be the end of the bailouts.

Both presidential candidates have responded dynamically by adopting a concerned, mature, "I've got gas" expression as though they are auditioning for Alka Seltzer ads, then saying that somebody needs to do, um, something.

Republican John McCain - standing for smaller government, paying debts and rugged individualism - won't admit that the supposed remedy for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is pure socialism, as found in those goofy little Third World countries whose legislatures vote to repeal the law of gravity, and earn most of their Gross National Product by selling postage stamps to collectors.

For Democrat Barack Obama, who has never seen a problem that cannot be solved by borrowing your Visa card, blowing a few hundred billion is probably, well, necessary. Change we need - because all the folding money is going to Washington.

Meanwhile, none of the candidates has dared to speak out on another crisis: Chili Mac.

For more on this commentary, go to The D.C. Examiner

Fill-in-the-blank article about price-gouging laws

by Art Carden

[As surely as summer follows spring, natural disasters are followed by saber rattling about "price gouging," which is usually defined very lucidly and clearly as an "unconscionable" increase in the price of a necessity. These tend to follow a formula, so I thought that instead of writing a new article discussing the unintended consequences of every price-gouging law that goes into effect after a natural disaster, it would be useful to write a universal, fill-in-the-blank article discussing the economics of price-gouging laws. Whenever there is a natural disaster, you can just fill in the relevant blanks for a complete analysis of the economics of the situation.]

Fearing increases in the prices of basic items as a result of (disaster) , officials in (state or municipality) have declared a state of emergency whereby restrictions on "price gouging" are now in effect. According to (politician or law enforcement official) , the law is designed to protect innocent consumers from "unconscionable" increases in the prices of food, gasoline, ice, electric generators, and home-repair services. The unintended, unseen consequences, however, are predictable, unfortunate, and avoidable.

For more on this commentary, go to The Ludwig von Mises Institute