Well better late than never. Our old friend, comedian Aman Ali, has a story today in the Journal News which is basically a summary of Talk of the Sound’s article in which we broke the story of the District Attorney investigation of the City of New Rochelle.
New Rochelle DPW faces fraud allegations
If you read our original story, you may notice that the JN article is basically Aman getting a quote from Chuck Strome and Lucien Chalfen, spokesman for Janet DeFiore and, apparently, having a “source” read our article to Aman who then attributes our information to his “source”.
Aman credits Talk of the Sound without mentioning the name of the site: “The investigation was first reported on a local blog this month.” Well that’s better than Patch anyway which just lifts our material directly without any sort of attribution.
Looking closely at the Journal News article there is not a single new piece of information regarding the allegations ($12,000 invoice for phony repairs, $5,000 invoice for paint job worth $200).
In other words, this article consists of Aman Ali calling people in White Plains and New Rochelle saying “is this Talk of the Sound story true” and reporting that people said “yes, it is true”. This is what Gannett calls “journalism” these days; asking government employees to confirm a story on a blog as opposed to doing their own investigation. Sort of like when they file stories about City Council meetings or Board of Education meetings as if they were present but actually base their stories on calls to government officials who give self-serving accounts which are then printed as “objective” reports on meetings or events. Or, when they watch meetings on TV or via video archives on the web and the fail to mention they were not actually present — something that results in termination and other newspapers.
Not mentioned in the article is that the primary focus of the initial investigation is Richard Fevang, DPW fleet manager. Also not mentioned is that recently-departed DPW Commissioner Jeffrey Coleman’s sudden and unexpected resignation a few weeks ago coincided with the copying of DPW invoices at City Hall that were then delivered to the DA.
Here is another tidbit that Mr. Ali can try to chase down.
Richard Fevang is preparing to retire — and soon, actual sources tell Talk of the Sound. As New Rochelle residents will soon discover, once a public employee retires and gets their pension it cannot be taken away. So, it is quite possible to end up with pension checks going to a criminal sitting in prison after being convicted of looting the same municipality which provided the convict’s pension. Of course, this is New Rochelle where no one ever goes to prison for stealing from the City or the Board of Education. But, if lightening strikes and a case is successfully brought against Mr. Fevang, he will in all liklihood still get paid.
Who knows, maybe they can offer to pay his pension with cartons of cigarettes.
WVOX gave proper credit to story
This morning while reporting on the DPW investigation,Bob Marrone called it ” …a story which first broke on the Tall of the Sound…”. So, giving credit to your source is not a big deal, unless of course, you’re a hack or a comedian. Or both.