Stockton, California’s Lousy Accounting, Incompetence Made Up for Its Lack of Corruption

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Caleb Newquist

"Stockton is not Bell — we found no evidence that corruption and self-dealing drove this city into insolvency," [state Controller John] Chiang said in a statement, referring to the Los Angeles suburb whose municipal leaders looted millions of dollars from its treasury. "Instead," Chiang wrote, "many of Stockton's problems can be tracked to poor decision-making that was not only ill-informed by weak accounting and fiscal management systems, but failed to heed downward-trending data that should have curbed spending and borrowing decisions." [AP]