Supervisors’ Trip to Washington

* Re “Supervisors Fly to D.C. to Try to Whittle Down Fine,” May 10.

What makes taxpayer advocate Jere Robings think he represents all the taxpayers in Ventura County? I have resided in here 19 years, and I applaud the Board of Supervisors for going to Washington, D.C., to lobby to save taxpayer dollars. Who would be opposed to such lobbying efforts?

Robings should take a lesson from the board and go to Sacramento to lobby for a return to the county of property tax dollars. Let’s not forget, the state has a projected surplus of more than $13 billion.

RAMAUL RUSH

Thousand Oaks

* I was confused and outraged upon reading of the trip by Ventura County Supervisors to Washington, D.C. This is a blatant attempt to politically renegotiate their $15.3-million settlement with the U.S. attorney over the county’s years of improper Medicare billings.

I was confused by the seeming naivete of our elected officials in thinking that they can get other elected officials to exert undue influence on the federal judicial process. I was outraged by the county’s audacity in trying to renege on the sweetheart deal they had been given by the federal prosecutors to settle up for all of the county’s ill-gotten gains from Medicare.

No matter how the supervisors and county administrators try to sugarcoat it, the county was engaging in a lengthy pattern of criminal health care fraud in this decade-long billing scandal.

Legions of private doctors, pharmacists and other medical practitioners have gone to prison for frauds of much smaller proportions. The county officials and employees who were responsible for this specific scheme--and those who knew about it yet failed to act to stop it--should consider themselves extremely lucky that they escaped a similar fate!

I have no doubt that the only reason this was handled as a civil matter is the fact that it was a county government perpetrating a crime. In criminal justice terminology, the county was offered a plea bargain. It readily accepted the $15.3 million “deal.”

It’s just like a bank robber accepting a prosecutor’s offer of a reduced sentence if he admits his guilt and accepts an agreed-upon punishment. The only difference is that if this criminal tried to back out, the deal would be off and the case would go to trial. Did our county officials stop to think about possible consequences of their ill-advised lobbying?

The county has already ripped off the taxpayers once with the fraudulent billing scheme. It wants to rip us off a second time with its stated plan to use tobacco settlement funds to pay the federal fine to which it had previously agreed. And now it is going to try to rip us off a third time by lobbying for special legislation to reduce the agreed-upon settlement.

Well, in my book, California’s three strikes rule should be applied here. You’re out, folks!

TOM PARKER

Westlake Village