EDITORIAL – During the last Presidential election Donald Trump claimed he was going to drain the swamp that has flooded the political process with lobbyist and politicians looking to line their pockets with special deals and contracts paid for with taxpayer’s dollars. That swamp is not exclusive to the Federal Government or the California State legislature in Sacramento. There is a swamp bubbling up all around the Madera County Government Center and in the last eight years it has grown both deeper and wider.

Whether it’s called “quid pro quo” or “pay for play”, developers and county vendors have learned that the best way to gain access to county contracts is through donations to Supervisors’ campaign bank accounts and social agendas. No one on the county board has taken more advantage of this than the Supervisor from Chowchilla, David Rogers.

As chairman of the Madera County Board of Supervisors in 2015 David Rogers controlled the agenda and the agenda committee. When the committee included a standard five-year extension to the existing ten year contract with Caglia Environmental for their December 15, 2015 meeting, why did they leave out any information for the board that related to the financial impact to the county and rate increases to the consumers?

According to his web page on the county’s official website in 2015 Mr. Rogers also sat on the Solid Waste Rate Committee. Along with the public works director, Mr. Rogers should have been one of the two most knowledgeable people on that agenda committee in regards to solid waste and the contract with Caglia Environmental. At that meeting in December of 2015 not only was a five year extension to the contract approved on the consent calendar, according to a recent audit released May 1, 2018 by the Madera County Auditor/Controller Todd Miller, that extension evidently caused an increase in costs to the county for solid waste management of over $2.8 million.  

WHY? Well maybe it has something to do with over $11,000 that was donated by Caglia Environmental to Mr. Roger’s campaigns over the five years since the county has had a contract with the solid waste company. Now these are only the donations we could identify, Rogers has received thousands of dollars from out of town LLC’s (limited liability company) that have listed agents only, and they do not identify the real company owners. One of Caglia’s donations for $2000 to Rogers came from Central North Investments just a few months after the contract extension was approved by the county.

Just a side note, while on the solid waste committee for the county of Madera Rogers accepted another $13,600 from other solid waste companies such as West Coast Waste, Mid Valley Disposal and Greenway Recycling.

What is most interesting about Rogers taking donations from companies doing business with the county is that during his 2010 campaign for supervisor, he said he never would. During a debate in Chowchilla he scolded his challenger former Chowchilla City Councilman Justin White for taking donations from developers. He also said that because of his Christian beliefs he would never take donations from the Indian casinos. But following a Big Valley News story that year Rogers was forced to return several donations to members of the Chukchansi Tribal Council.

Since his first supervisors race in 2010, Rogers seems to have completely changed his mind on casino money since he took $5700 from the Chukchansi Casino for his congressional campaign. He must also have changed his mind on High Speed Rail as he has also taken another $1500 from the engineering firm developing the multi-billion dollar project through Madera County.

But the biggest change for Rogers comes from the multi-million dollar developers. If it wasn’t for Rogers’s new found bro-mances with the big time developers his campaign coffers would probably be nearly empty. In his first campaign he didn’t take a dime from developers that did not live within his district. During his 2010 campaign his largest developer donation came from Madera Realtor Ed McIntyre for $1400. However since that first campaign Rogers has accepted over $64,000 in developer money alone and he ran unopposed in 2014.

The most interesting aspect about the campaign donations Rogers has received from developers is that we haven’t found a single instance where he has voted against anything for which he took money. As for why Rogers went back on his word he gave voters in 2010 about campaign finances the Supervisor said in 2014, “I didn’t mean that for every campaign.”

What did he do with all that money? In 2014 a Big Valley News story revealed the Supervisor was paying his sons and daughter-in-laws thousands of campaign dollars to walk precincts or serve as hostess at his campaign functions.

While his 2018 disclosures to date do not show that he paid any of his family members, during his congressional race his campaign did write checks to his wife, Leslie Rogers, for nearly $3000 including a campaign refund for $140 issued on June 30, 2016 following Rogers defeat in the June Primary.

Running for office must be hard work. On October 12, 2011 Supervisor David Rogers explained this opinion to county employees who were questioning why they were the only ones taking a financial hit during the tail end of the last recession. Madera County employees were asking why the board of supervisors wasn’t taking a pay cut to get through the difficult time and Mr. Rogers explained it in detail, on video tape.

He told the employees that he spent too much of his own money and worked too hard to get elected to his seat and he was not going to take a financial hit. Rogers said he spend $50,000 of his own money to be elected but in reviewing his financial disclosures we could not find any documentation that showed Rogers spent anywhere near that amount from his personal money nor did he make a loan of that amount to his campaign.

Rogers, however has had no problem spending tax payers money. His travel expenses over the last few years has cost the taxpayers over $69k as he has attended conferences in Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, Long Beach, Washington D.C. and Palm Springs. He not only charges his $5 Starbucks coffees to the Madera County Taxpayers he came up with the great idea of the county having their own Starbucks Kiosk at the Government Center.

When that plan failed the county ended up paying the franchisee over $150k in cancelation fees. As reported in the Sierra Online News on February 10, 2016, “This project was the brainchild of District 2 Supervisor David Rogers, who sees it not only as a benefit to the employees but, more importantly, as creating a familiar relationship between the public and the county government.”

While Rogers was busy with his coffee venture and his disastrous attempt to run for Congress, the Madera County Fire Station 3 living quarters and offices were falling apart and have since been condemned by the county causing people in his district to go without adequate fire protection. After over a year the Station 3 Fire Truck and crew are still housed several miles away in the city of Madera’s Station 6 adding at least five minutes to their response time and there are no plans to rebuild the station house and offices.

Rogers came into politics in 2010 as an Anti-Obama Tea Party Conservative but over the last eight years he has not only learned to play the game but profit from it. He’s even learned how to charge Madera taxpayers for his mileage from his home to work and collects another $400 a month for driving his own car, like we all do without compensation. When Donald Trump spoke of draining the swamp I wonder what he would think of politicians like David Rogers who claim to be a conservative but sure does enjoy the taxpayer-provided perks he never had before.

On June 5^th its time to drain Madera County’s Swamp.