An e-mail sent last year from the finance director of the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. to mayoral aides purporting to detail SEDC’s salaries is tantamount to fraud, mayoral Spokesman Fred Sainz just told me.
The e-mail was among hundreds of pages of SEDC-related documents that were released by the Mayor’s Office this week.
Dayacap sent the e-mail on July 25, 2007 to the city’s Chief Operating Officer Jay Goldstone and the city’s Chief Financial Officer, Mary Lewis. The message has two attachments, which, Dayacap writes, contain an “analysis of SEDC’s approved FY08 salary schedule.”
Here’s the first of the attachments. Of interest are the “explanations” at the bottom of the document, which seek to outline the various extra compensation payments paid to SEDC employees.
Sainz said the explanations — which are meant to explain more than $1 million in extra compensation and bonuses paid to SEDC staff in the last five years — are “misleading at best and downright fraud at worst.”
The last explanation on the document, which deals with merit increases/longevity payments, includes this statement:
Please note that this was established to recognize the value of an employee who has chosen to remain with the Corporation; and thus, as his or her value to the corporation increases, the lump sum amount may increase.
“Even now, knowing all that I know about SEDC, I can’t figure out what these mean,” Sainz said. “This is fraud, this is not just misrepresentation, it is fraud.
“It sets the standard for students at law school who want to learn how to not be transparent and how to hide the ball,” he added.