In theft, trust is the greater loss

No matter how much trust you think you've earned, no matter how much of a "family atmosphere" you think you've created, there always seems to be somebody who's determined to take advantage.

That's a harsh lesson the city of Coeur d'Alene just learned, and it should serve as a stern reminder to every other entity entrusted with the public's hard-earned tax dollars.

To their credit, when city officials learned that a trusted 10-year employee had likely stolen thousands of dollars, the officials brought the matter promptly to the public's attention. There were no excuses; there was only a growing pile of damning facts that should have been detected earlier.

When months-long investigations were finally concluded and the evidence brought to bear against her, former city finance department employee Sheryl Lynn Carroll pleaded guilty last Friday to embezzling an estimated $365,000 from city taxpayers. The thefts occurred over a five-year period and might not have been detected yet except that irregularities surfaced when Carroll was away on vacation this summer.

Adding embarrassment to gross negligence, the city failed to do adequate background checks on Carroll or other employees in key positions of financial access. After suspicions about Carroll were first announced, The Press investigated Carroll's past and learned that she had been convicted of felony theft in Oregon - a flashing warning sign that the city had failed to see.

The city's errors in judgment and in oversight are magnified by last year's conviction of a county employee who stole $140,000 over 10 years. If it could happen there, city officials should have reasoned, could not something like that also happen with the city?

That would have been a good time to review and stringently revise city finance policies and procedures. Had officials been at all introspective, they would have realized that the city had long made it relatively easy for someone to steal money and cover his or her tracks.

The city of Coeur d'Alene is now doing criminal background checks on all finance department employees, and a number of checks and balances have been implemented to eliminate a repeat of Carroll's offense. But great damage has been done, not just to city coffers and the city's relationship with several vendors, but with the much more important citizenry it serves.

Locally, this is the second egregious crime involving the public's trust and its money that has surfaced in the past year. If the negative publicity from this latest theft jolts others entrusted with the public's money into stronger safeguards, only then may the $365,000 downpayment seem justified.