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Let me get this straight.
Valley Metro CEO Stephen Banta gets paid $265,000 a year and chomps down a taxpayer paid dinner that costs $4,700 and stays at $600 a night hotels on a taxpayer financed vacation, but the f*cking idiots at Valley Metro can't even get the 1st 56 bus of the day to run on time more then once or twice a week. Valley Metro CEO Stephen Banta routinely and illegally uses taxpayer money to buy liquor and instead of firing him, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton cuts a secret deal with him to keep him on the job as a high paid consultant???? And tries to hide the deal from the public??? How many times do I have to tell you folks that government is corrupt to the core and isn't getting any better?
Roberts: We are slapped again (and again and again) in Valley Metro scheme Laurie Roberts, The Republic | azcentral.com 11:39 a.m. MST December 3, 2015 Slap in the face No. 1: The chief executive officer of Valley Metro suddenly resigns his $265,000-a-year job as The Republic is about to blow the lid on his expense account: the posh dinners with public officials and phantom guests. The first-class trips to places like Munich and Milan. His $600-a-night hotel stays. All on the taxpayers’ dime, naturally. Slap in the face No 2: A top aide to Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and the city's budget director broker a secret deal with Valley Metro CEO Stephen Banta, asking him to resign before the story is published and promising him that they would support keeping him on the payroll until January then continuing on as a paid consultant with full pay and benefits through April 2016. Phoenix staffers also cooked up a bogus story to tell the public about why he was resigning. This, in Phoenix city hall circles, is what we call transparency. Slap in the face No 3: Banta on Tuesday says he is rescinding his resignation, a sweet move that would allow him to collect a full year’s severance pay in the likely event that the two boards that supposedly oversee Valley Metro would then fire him. The two boards will jointly meet this afternoon to consider whether to accept Banta’s resignation. If they don’t, well then, I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been backhanded. Banta unexpectedly announced his resignation last week, just as Republic reporter Craig Harris was about to write about his expense account, which reads in part like a meal ticket for some of our leading lights. Among other things, Banta spent $227 taking Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott and Goodyear Mayor Georgia Lord to dinner and a cool $19,000 treating Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers, city council members and staffers to a two-day junket to Portland, Ore. – a trip that included a $4,700 dinner at one of the nicest restaurants in town. Then there was that $755 dinner with Phoenix mayoral wannabe Tom Simplot and another $99 entertaining Simplot at Pita Jungle. How do two people manage to spend $99 at Pita Jungle? Unless it’s on booze. Of course, Valley Metro policy forbids spending public money on alcohol. Then again, Banta told Harris that the rules don’t apply to him. No really. He did. And evidently it’s true because Harris has found that Banta treated at least nine guests to fancy dinners totaling $2,243 over the last two years – dinner guests who tell Harris they weren’t there. The Valley Metro boards – comprised of 21 public officials from across the Valley -- have now called for an audit of the books. This, just four months after giving Banta a $25,000 bonus. On Thursday afternoon, they’ll decide whether to accept Banta’s resignation or to consider his withdrawal of that resignation. “On reflection, I believe I was hurried into a resignation decision,” Banta wrote. “Moreover, I believe it was neither in Valley Metro or my best interest to resign under such pressure.” Hey pal, how about the best interests of we mere taxpayers who foot the bill for all your largesse? We should foot the bill no longer. And while we’re at it, we should be asking questions about what the heck these two Valley Metro boards were doing in the way of oversight – besides giving this guy a bonus.(Perhaps they leaarned what they know about oversight from the Fiesta Bowl Board of Directors?) And why Phoenix officials -- specifically Stanton's policy advisor, Seth Scott, and Deputy City Manager Mario Paniagua -- were quietly cutting deals to allow this guy to remain on the payroll and the public to remain in the dark about what was really going on. With our money. Always with our money. And no, I'm not buying that this was done for our own good, to save us money. The guy should have been fired. Period. Oh, the guy has a contract that requires that we pay him a year’s pay in severance even if he’s fired? (A contract negotiated in 2009 by his Pita Jungle pal, Simplot, and unanimously approved by the board -- twice. Disgusting doesn't even begin to cover this scandal.
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