Plenty of fodder for FBI probe in Oakland

CWOAKLANDMUGS_014_OHARA.jpg Oakland City Hall, Oakland CA. City Council members, City Manager, Deborah Edgerly Photo/John O'Hara Ran on: 08-18-2006, Ran on: 08-22-2006 Ran on: 09-22-2006, Ran on: 10-15-2006 Ran on: 01-16-2007, Ran on: 01-30-2007 Ran on: 02-02-2007, Ran on: 02-26-2007 Ran on: 07-18-2007, Ran on: 08-05-2007 Ran on: 08-10-2007, Ran on: 08-14-2007 Ran on: 08-19-2007, Ran on: 08-21-2007 Ran on: 09-07-2007, Ran on: 09-27-2007 Ran on: 10-20-2007, Who got it done: Steve Heminger, executive director, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, (510) 817-5700; sheminger@mtc.ca.gov Ran on: 10-27-2007, Ran on: 10-31-2007 Ran on: 01-06-2008 City Administrator Deborah Edgerly is among the leaders who received a &quo;shake-it-up&quo; letter from the mayor. Ran on: 01-25-2008, Ran on: 02-01-2008 Ran on: 03-05-2008,Ran on: 06-20-2008 Deborah Edgerly, the city administrator, is Oakland's highest-ranking nonelected official. Ran on: 06-21-2008 City Administrator Deborah Edgerly denies getting an ultimatum from Mayor Ron Dellums. Ran on: 06-24-2008 Deborah Edgerly described news accounts of the incident as &quo;shocking because I am being tried in the court of public opinion by rumor, innuendo and presumption of guilt.&quo; Ran on: 06-24-2008 Ran on: 06-25-2008 Deborah Edgerly Ran on: 06-28-2008 Deborah Edgerly is the subject of an Oakland police inquiry. Ran on: 07-02-2008 Ran on: 07-03-2008 Mayor Ron Dellums Ran on: 07-11-2008 Deborah Edgerly was fired as Oakland city administrator by Mayor Ron Dellums last week. ALSO 08-23-20085 sTAR Ran on: 11-17-2008 Deborah Edgerly's hiring practices are under investigation by the city and the FBI. Ran on: 02-27-2009 Former City Administra- tor Deborah Edgerly Ran on: 02-27-2009 Former City Administra- tor Deborah Edgerly Ran on: 02-27-2009 Former City Administra- tor... less CWOAKLANDMUGS_014_OHARA.jpg Oakland City Hall, Oakland CA. City Council members, City Manager, Deborah Edgerly Photo/John O'Hara Ran on: 08-18-2006, Ran on: 08-22-2006 Ran on: 09-22-2006, Ran on: 10-15-2006 Ran ... more Photo: John O'Hara, The Chronicle Photo: John O'Hara, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Plenty of fodder for FBI probe in Oakland 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The FBI is busier than you might think these days in places you might not expect - city halls across America. There, agents are working to root out corruption in addition to probing state officials such as state Sen. Don Perata of Oakland.

According to its Web site, the FBI has elevated public corruption to No. 4 on the agency's Top 10 List of crimes - behind terrorism, espionage and cyber crimes.

In April, the agency reported more than 2,500 active investigations and the convictions of more than 18,000 public officials since 2003. The number of investigators in the agency's public corruption unit nearly doubled in size during the same period.

And while it is FBI policy not to comment on an ongoing investigation, Oakland residents have to believe, as I do, that a few eyebrows in the agency's public corruption unit in the Bay Area must be raised over recent developments in Oakland's City Hall.

City Administrator Deborah Edgerly's firing three weeks ago - after police began investigating whether she tipped off her nephew, a city parking-meter repairman, to a police investigation before he and 50 other alleged members of a violent gang were arrested - had to have been a red flag.

Then came revelations, reported in this column, that Edgerly's kids got summer jobs with the city three years ago and were paid even when they didn't work, according to a report by a whistle-blowing former city controller.

"Common sense suggests that any time there is money and power involved in any situation, any organization or government, there is always the potential for corruption," Joseph Schadler, an FBI agent in the bureau's San Francisco office, told me Monday.

"We are arguably the only (law enforcement) agency in a position to investigate public corruption. "It's much easier for the federal government to investigate criminal behavior when it comes to state, local and county officials because we have no entrenched interest. All we do is investigate, and that puts us in a unique position."

In recent years, federal law enforcement authorities have kept an eye on Oakland City Hall, including the case against a politically connected tailor charged with trying to extort money from a bidder for a city contract (he later pleaded guilty to perjury), while pursuing a long-term investigation of Perata.

Don't let the palm trees fool you: Oakland can go scandal for scandal with the some of the most hapless cities in the nation, including Detroit - where "the felony indictments have started to flow, and the feds have joined the fun," Detroit News columnist Daniel Howes wrote last week.

Among the indicted, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick faces eight counts of perjury for his testimony to a grand jury about a romantic affair with a staff member and for allegedly steering public contracts to his father.

And Detroit City Council member Sheila Cockrell confirmed that the feds have subpoenaed her records as part of two council-approved deals under investigation by the FBI.

While elected officials in Detroit chose to argue instead of vote on a measure to help balance the city's budget, Oakland city officials, almost simultaneously, announced that Edgerly may have understated the city's budget deficit by $30 million.

Perata has been the focus of an FBI probe for the last four years. Among other things, Perata is under investigation for his role in the hiring of a Washington lobbyist to get funding for a road to the Oakland airport to aid longtime Perata contributor Ron Cowan, The Chronicle reported Monday.

Perata, who is termed out of the state Legislature at the end of the year, has been considered the leading successor to Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums in two years.

It's obvious to anyone watching the circus tent collapse around Oakland City Hall that the city's internal checks and balances - as well as the elected members of the Oakland City Council - aren't up to the task.

In all the scrambling to come up with reform packages from the City Council and the city attorney's office, the most glaringly obvious problem is the city's inability to enforce the laws already on the books.

There are anti-nepotism rules in the City Charter that, if enforced, provide guidance about hiring family members and fiduciary rules in place to regulate how public funds are handled.

But with no strong, knowledgeable leadership in the mayor's office or a unified council willing to stand up for its own ethics policies, Oakland residents are never going to know the breadth of the problems in our government.

If federal law enforcement authorities believed there was ample evidence to investigate elected officials in Detroit, Newark, N.J., and contractors and guards at the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center in Tennessee, Oakland's city "government should be on the agency's to-do list.