It definitely seems there is something going on. In past years the Fire Inspector there and the State Rep have both told us that they consider Ron Williams a personal friend. I would not be surprised at al of he was padding purses. He holds a lot of land, far more assets than he is claiming and he has always skimmed and cheated financially. I can attest to small pilfering things we know he did, but I believe that a man dishonest in the small things is dishonest in every way.
Padding individual purses isn't even necessary, sadly, for folks like Williams, a dependable and generous political donor, to exert influence up through and including over the legislative process.
One clue that such influence is being wielded behind the scene is if a seemingly non-controversial bill is well on the way to passage, or has already passed one legislative chamber, but then dies for no apparent or explicable reason in committee.
I've seen how that works first hand in my state, and in fact, was in one instance indirectly involved in it happening. DH works for an extremely wealthy and equally powerful fellow, who has his own personal lobbyist to represent his interests in our state legislature. The House had already passed a particular bill, unanimously, and it had landed in the relevant Senate committee.
My DH & I had personally appealed to his boss to help stop the bill in any way he could. I can't go into details, but will just say that the bill was underwritten by medical insurance companies, and though masked as an innocuous measure, it would have deprived thousands in my state of adequate medical care.
He was sympathetic & willing to help. What he did was to send his personal lobbyist (a $1,000 an hour man), gratis, to "speak" to the committee chair. No one else on the committee was aware of those conversations. She killed the bill.
The bill's sponsors in both House and Senate never did figure out what happened.
Even though the outcome in that instance was a "victory" and a huge relief, it was also extremely troubling and disillusioning. That exercise of that kind of behind the scenes influence, available only to the wealthy & powerful, is how folks like Williams stay in business, and remain unaccountable.
IMO, the curiously similar legislative history of the 3 failed attempts by the US Congress to pass an unobjectionable, common-sense bill (that would [in essence] have required overseers of private institutions to report child abuse, and to allow those being kept there to report it themselves) suggests that in the short-term, anyway, looking to DC for any help or solution is tilting at windmills.
