(Once again, we have cross-posted this on our
blog so Kos readers can keep up on the scandals in Ohio.)
Nearly all the Ohio papers today reported on a just-released email from ex-Ohio BWC administrator Jim Conrad showing that he and two top Taft aides made a conscious effort to bottle up information on the MDL losses. From the Enquirer:
[A]n e-mail made public Thursday showed former BWC administrator James Conrad decided to keep information about an investment loss that ultimately hit $215 million from weekly reports given to Taft.
Conrad made the decision after talking to Jim Samuel, Taft's top business aide, and Jon Allison, Taft's chief of staff, according to e-mails obtained through a records request.
"I talked to both Samuel and Allison," Conrad said in an Oct. 28 e-mail to Mark Nedved, then BWC's legislative liaison. "They have enough information at the present time and both agreed it would be a mistake to put it in the weekly due to the wide and uncontrolled circulation of the Governor's weekly."
The three's intent was not to keep the info from Taft but to keep it from going outside Taft's inner circle. This email further erodes the credibility of Taft's claims that the didn't know of the MDL losses until this Spring. Allison and Samuel are Taft's lieutenants. It is naive to believe anything except that Conrad was meeting with Samuel and Allison so that they would verbally pass on the information about MDL to him without alerting others.
A couple of other developments are worth noting:
The Dayton Daily News and others report that the amount of money missing from Tom Noe's fund may grow substantially:
Tracy Valentino, bureau chief financial officer, said the loss from the Noe funds could be greater and that $13 million was the best case scenario. [emphasis added]
The Blade reported that even as Mark Lay watched the last bit of cash being draid from his MDL fund, he still took his cut.
Despite the traumatic losses, Mr. Lay continued to be optimistic. He was one of the few parties who had benefited from the investment, raking in $1.01 million in management fees in 2004. The fees were subtracted from the fund's shrinking assets.
--
Posted by HypoSpeak to Hypothetically Speaking