I think I'm ready to use the librarian's curse now. . .

Excerpted from: Kickback suspects out on bail in Sacramento library case
By Christina Jewett - cjewett@sacbee.com

"Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Marv Stern said the case stems from Dennis Nilsson, 61, and James Mayle, 63, deciding to steer maintenance work to the firm owned by Mayle's wife, Janie Rankins-Mayle, 59. Nilsson was the library's maintenance director, and Mayle was the library's security director.

Stern said Nilsson steered subcontractors who once worked for the library to work for Janie Rankins-Mayle and her company, Hagginwood Services Inc.

Rankins-Mayle took the subcontractors' invoices, transposed information to her own letterhead and "she would inflate the billing," Stern said. "Nilsson would sign off on the bills."

Stern said Hagginwood completed $1.3 million in work for the library and his office did not determine how much of the bills were padded.

He said the Mayle couple wrote checks to Nilsson totaling more than $90,000 and aligning with the payment Nilsson approved for the maintenance work."

WTF.

I'm angry that this sort of thing is so commonplace! So many people steal from us (I'm not going to use the term public because "public" doesn't mean anything) because we don't feel responsible to each other. I'm sure that the director, Gold had her reasons for not stopping this when she was first alerted, and I'm sure that Nilsson and the Mayles believed that "they were due." And on top of everything else I'm sure it was just all too easy to steal from a bureaucracy that they felt was "cheating them." I write about things I couldn't possibly know with such confidence because I see this attitude everywhere. People complain about their jobs, about how little they get paid, how they work so hard and it is never recognized, how bosses are so unreasonable and ask the impossible, how people don't understand what they do, and little by little these negative thoughts make it that much easier to take from the vaguely seen "public." That's us! We are resentfully stealing from ourselves because we believe we deserve it! I guess we do.