IAFF: When Lima Went Out on a Limb
Did the very best he could for Schaitberger
Just about a week ago, a nattily attired Harold Schaitberger made a splashy video where he proclaimed vindication regarding the taking of his illicit pension beginning in 2000, when he was first elected.
Yesterday, he announced his retirement.
From “vindication” to out the door in one week.
No one did more to try to convince us that Schaitberger’s pension taking was legit than California’s Frank Lima.
Lima’s committee wrote:
Our determination [to absolve Schaitberger] is due in no small part to the amount of time that has passed since the events at issue and the significant prejudice to Mr. Schaitberger resulting from the passage of time and the wasting of evidence.
Lima, faced with the clear cut task of upholding fundamental integrity in a critical financial matter, chose instead to give Schaitberger a pass using reasons which defy either ethics or the facts.
For him, when enough time passes, it serves as both a cover-up device and a statute of limitation which bars the application of justice.
And then he blames it on a dead guy
Not content to offer absurd excuses, Lima proceeded to attribute the impetus for Schaitberger’s pension to the now deceased former secretary treasurer Vincent Bollon.
In Lima’s comic version, Bollon realizes that Schaitberger, making $300,000 a year, can shake still more coins from the upturned couch. Bollon, panicked and racked with guilt, rushes to prepare the paperwork so that his close friend, Harold Schaitberger, can be made whole.
Sound like bullshit?
It is.
From the very first day, Vincent Bollon was forced to fight a rearguard battle just to maintain the constitutional authority of his office against the incessant undermining actions of Schaitberger.
There is not a millisecond’s doubt that Harold Schaitberger engineered the entire pension scam from beginning to end, just as he lined up the votes to arrange the board election of Tom Miller as secretary treasurer, one more example of his fondness for self-dealing intrigue.
When you are in the situation Vincent Bollon was in, you pick your battles carefully.
Lima’s dropping this on Vincent Bollon’s grave is both an act of desperation and desecration.
Lastly, he delivers a big “fuck you” to the feds
But Lima’s biggest blunder was to choose this moment, above all others, to pander and suck up to Schaitberger.
The United States Attorney, the FBI and the Department of Labor are in our house and scrutinizing every move we make, as they should.
Given the opportunity to show that we have the ability to govern ourselves properly, this is what Frank Lima came up with.
A report that defies logic, is ethically crippled and insulting to the feds.
If our own members didn’t buy it what does he think the feds are saying?
When it was either the survival of our union or propping up King Schaitberger, Lima was all in on the latter.
Flipping off the feds shows a complete absence of strategic intelligence.
Frank Lima lacks the moral underpinnings and maturity necessary for ethical leadership.
And he wants to be the next secretary treasurer?
The facts say otherwise.
To Frank Lima we say, this is what accountability looks like.
