Just to take a quick breather from my daily countdown of the stories to watch this year, I had to take note of this. The Star-News, a South Bay weekly, has really gotten excited about my interview recently with Chula Vista City Councilman John McCann.
The paper has now doggedly picked up the torch trying to find out what McCann meant when he told me that a former city manager had “cooked the books.”
You’ll remember he told me that and then rushed off to a meeting.
The Star-News wasn’t able to get a hold of him two weeks ago to follow up, but wrote this story. The paper tried again last week, speaking to many of his colleagues. But just like when he spoke to me, McCann was too busy to elaborate on his thoughts with the paper because he had to go to meetings.
I especially enjoyed The Star-News‘ inclusion of a definition of the term “cooking the books” in case some of its readers were confused about its implication.
… a buzzword describing fraudulent activities performed by corporations in order to falsify their financial statements. Typically, cooking the books involves augmenting financial data to yield previously non-existent earnings.”
They got that definition from a website, investopedia.com. Separately, in an editorial, the paper wondered whether McCann’s remark would have consequences even though it was published in the “dark regions of cyberspace.”
Maybe if the story makes it to investopedia it will.