Justice

The final curtain is falling on the Metro Courthouse scandal. Former State Senator Manny Aragon is pleading to charges that he received kickbacks on the Courthouse construction. He and others, including former Mayor Ken Schultz, will most likely be in prison for a while. Others will get away with fines and probation.

I have known Manny and Schultz for many years. They teamed up against me when I ran for Mayor in 1985. I lost to Schultz after an extremely nasty negative campaign waged against me. Manny helped with that. They had accused my lovely wife of racism because she kept her last name and said my children kept her name so they would not be identified as Hispanics. That of course was not true, but it worked just enough to beat me in the valley areas. I never much liked Schultz because of that.

I grew to like Manny though because he usually voted for the little guy in his Senate votes through the years. However, he did betray them by taking this illicit money. Money that could have been used for some good purpose or to lessen taxes for low income people.

Will prison time mean much at this point for Manny and Ken and the rest of the crew? I think it won't serve much purpose and it will cost an additional 150K a year to incarcerate them. Maybe more. After some time in Federal prison they should send them to halfway houses. At any rate, Justice is being served.