The saga of Rep. Laura Richardson's mismanaged personal finances continues to grow, as the Long Beach Press-Telegram reports that the freshman congresswoman failed to paid her car bills to one mechanic and abandoned her damaged car with another.
After wrecking her own car, she grabbed a city-owed vehicle and proceeded to put more than 30,000 miles on the car in just over a year. City policy states that city-owned cars are not for personal use in member's part-time role on the council in the 50-square mile city.
The car troubles come on the heels of news that Richardson lost her Sacramento home to a foreclosure after failing to pay her mortgage payments and defaulted on her two other homes in Long Beach and San Pedro.
All this while Richardson was loaning money to her own campaigns as she rose from the Long Beach City Council to the state Assembly and on to Congress in less than a year.
From the Press-Telegram:
In October 2005, her 1999 four-door 740iL BMW had an odd vibration in the front, so she took it to Signal Hill Foreign Auto Service, according to Leo Labreche, the shop owner.
Mechanics there fixed the car and replaced some worn parts, but when Richardson picked up her vehicle, she said she didn't have the money to pay the $735 bill, Labreche said. Because Richardson was a council member, Labreche let her take the car, assuming that she was good for the money, he said.
"She had picked the car up and was going to come back and pay the bill, and she never did," Labreche said.
Labreche said he spent months leaving messages on Richardson's cell phone voice mail, then he got a collection agency involved, but still the bill went unpaid.
"I couldn't get through to her, and then when the collection agency couldn't do anything, I thought, `There's nothing I'm going to be able to do,"' Labreche said.
A month later, she apparently wrecked the front of the car, rendering it undrivable. She then abandoned the car at another auto-body shop.
The Press-Telegram then reports that one day after Richardson abandoned her wrecked BMW, she checked out a city-owned Toyota Prius "for her council business."
She returned the car - 30,000 miles later - after she had left the council.
We'll let the Press-Telegram take it from here:
In a letter acquired by the Press-Telegram from then-City Manager Jerry Miller to Richardson dated Dec. 5, 2006, Miller asks Richardson to return her city vehicle, identified as a Prius.
According to the letter, Richardson's last day as a council member was Dec. 3, 2006. She was sworn into the Assembly the following day.
City Fleet Services records show that Richardson turned in the car on Dec. 8, 2006, Reynolds said.
During the one year and almost three weeks that Richardson had the Prius, she drove it 30,920 miles, Reynolds said. That amounts to an average of more than 80 miles per day, or about 2,400 miles per month, for Richardson's part-time council job in a 50-square-mile city.
By comparison, the only other two council members who used city vehicles during part or all of the same time period averaged 900 miles per month in one case and less than 400 miles per month in the other, according to figures provided by Reynolds.
Council members can either use their own vehicles for council business and receive a monthly car allowance from the city, or they may use city vehicles. However, city policy doesn't allow city vehicles to be used for personal use.
Richardson has never been shy about using city cars.
In 2001 and 2002, she had the highest vehicle expenses of any council member, in part by putting nearly 7,000 personal miles on her car in 2002. At the time, she and other council members told the Press-Telegram that they hadn't been aware of the no-personal-use rule.
In 2003, Richardson had been using a gas-guzzling Ford Expedition owned by the city, but switched to a Toyota Solara to save money. She told the Press-Telegram then that she soon would stop using a city vehicle altogether and would switch to a monthly car allowance.
She scrapped that effort in 2005 when she left her BMW at the auto body shop and again got behind the wheel of a city car.
Richardson, by the way, never returned the paper's calls for comment. She did, however, go to the auto shops to pay off her debts.
Last Tuesday - as she was paying off the car bills - she overwhelmingly won her Democratic primary for reelection with nearly 75 percent of the vote.
@Nyx.CommentBody@