The whilstleblower who unearthed what prosecutors have since described as a kickback scheme in the city-county library authority testified today that the system's former director "reacted badly" when first told about the alleged improprieties.
Diana Boerman, a senior accounts payable technician for the library authority, said she first shared her suspicions with former library director Anne Marie Gold in October 2005 on the suggestion of one of her union representatives.
"Ms. Gold reacted badly," Boerman told a Sacramento Superior Court jury, under questioning for Deputy District Attorney Mike Blazina. "She threw her hands up in my face and said she didn't want to hear anything about it."
Boerman said the director regained her composure and apologized, "thanked me for coming," but still "dismissed me from her office."
The Sacramento County Grand Jury and the District Attorney's Office later picked up on Boerman's information and in April of 2008 filed criminal complaints against the library's former facilities director Dennis Nilsson on charges that he was in the middle of a kickback scheme that ultimately cost taxpayers $150,000.
Nilsson, 65, is facing 18 separate counts related to grand theft and accepting bribes in the trial now underway in front of Judge Allen H. Sumner.
The library's former security chief, James Mayle, 66, and Mayle's wife, Janie Rankins-Mayle, 62, who owned two handyman repair firms that were paid $1.3 million to do work for the library authority, also are charged in the case. They are charged with grand theft and offering a bribe. Mayle and Nilsson also are charged under the state Government Code with self-dealing.
The defendants have contended that the payments that were directed to Mrs. Mayle's two companies were not out of line with what other private vendors were receiving, nor were they much different - and in some cases were even less - than the cost of similar work that was performed by city and county employees themselves.
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