Political Quotes

“Merrick Garland's memo says this: ``Principle: Monitorships should be designed to minimize the cost to jurisdictions''--the one in Maricopa County is $350 million; the one in Oakland is who knows how many millions of dollars--``and to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.'' It goes on to be a little bit more specific: ``Monitorships must nonetheless be designed and administered with awareness that every dollar spent on a monitorship is a dollar that cannot be spent on other policy priorities.'' In other words, don't divert the taxpayers' money so they can't fulfill all of their responsibilities. Here is another quote: ``Monitorships should be designed to avoid even the appearance that a monitor is primarily motivated by profit.'' We have a monitor in Maricopa County, for instance, who gets $3 million a year on average over the term of his monitorship and who seems to be moving the goalposts, just like he did in Oakland. These seem to be saying: Hey, maybe he does have a profit motivation. Specifically, this is what they recommend: Cap the monitor fees, an annual cap on monitor fees; encourage use of pro bono time, reduced rates, and nonprofits; explore alternative fee arrangements; and restrict lead monitor participation in multiple monitorships.”