”
Felony stupid.
”
That much is clear in the case against former Gilroy Councilman
Craig Gartman who is charged with stealing more than $9,000 from
the Gilroy Memorial Day Parade funds.
“Felony stupid.” That much is clear in the case against former Gilroy Councilman Craig Gartman who is charged with stealing more than $9,000 from the Gilroy Memorial Day Parade funds.
Gartman wrote checks from the Memorial Day Parade account to his wife in her maiden name. He discussed with the District Attorney’s office, in whatever roundabout fashion hardly matters, ways to pay back money he couldn’t account for. He hemmed and hawed about turning the books over to the Gilroy Exchange Club before that organization took over the parade. He destroyed financial records for the Memorial Day Parade fund, which is especially baffling for a councilman who prided himself on being a detail person. He acknowledged changing the provisions of the Memorial Day Parade fund account from requiring two signatures on checks to only one. He reimbursed himself for printed flyers from Next Day Flyers that the DA, with good reason, believes were related to his political campaigns, not the Memorial Day Parade.
Could it be a case of “no good deed goes unpunished?” It’s possible, but considering the documents in the court file, it doesn’t look that way at all. Neither Gartman nor his attorney, Kirk Elliot, are talking despite repeated attempts to reach them, so if there’s another side to the story, it isn’t getting told.
Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney John Chase, who is in charge of the DA’s Public Integrity Unit, says the felony grand theft case is hardly about “t-shirts and meals.” When concerns about the Memorial Day Parade funds publicly surfaced two years ago, this clearly was the characterization Gartman made – no big deal, just a disagreement about a few bucks.
But, as DA Chase emphasized, that’s not the case. The fact, for example, that Gartman personally received a $1,500 check from Gilroy developer James Suner of The James Group, a check that Suner couldn’t account for, speaks volumes. In the course of the DA’s investigation, donations to the Memorial Day Parade were made by Suner, but also checks were written to Gartman himself. A $5,000 check to Gartman, Suner explained to the DA, was to pay Gartman for installing closets into one of Suner’s model homes. It’s a tangled web indeed.
What has become clear in the last few weeks, given Gartman’s arrest and an alleged $52,000 embezzlement by Gilroy Unified School District Trustee Francisco Dominguez, is that Gilroy organizations which handle significant sums of money must have secure procedures in place that are methodically followed and backed up by verifiable records. This goes for every group from Little League to all the home and school clubs, because one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
When funds are donated or secured via a grant, there is public trust involved. When that trust is shattered, it hurts the entire community. Two people signing checks should be imperative. Neither Gartman, in the case of the Memorial Day Parade, nor Dominguez, in the case of the administration of the Drug Free Communities federal grant as a consultant for the South County Collaborative, were required to have a second signer on checks. That’s a safeguard which should never be sacrificed in order to “make things easier.”
Gilroyans are a generous lot, but incidents like these are devastating to those who give time, money and effort toward good causes.
In the Memorial Day Parade situation, the good news is that a full-scale investigation took place which should resolve the central issue. Once it’s sorted out, Gilroy can move on in a positive fashion, hopefully applying the hard lessons learned regardless of the verdict.
