MADERA - Over the Easter weekend Madera County Supervisor Rick Farinelli claimed in a press release to his supporters that "political hucksters" or "gang-bangers" stole thirty of the sixty "large" political signs his campaign purchased that were placed along Howard Road and South Granada Drive.

Farinelli told his campaign supporters he needs to raise "emergency" money to replace these signs, which he valued at $84 each or $2500. However according to Madera Police Sergeant Johnny Smith, the supervisor told police officers at the "scene of the crime" that he had over sixty signs throughout Madera and estimated that he lost thirty signs and stakes that weekend at a value of $100 each or a total of $3000.

Farinelli claimed the signs stolen were "large" signs but the truth is they were only 4' x 4'. A little research online found that signs of this size did sell for approximately $84 each. However when you purchased them in quantities of sixty the price drops significantly to around $19 each.

However Farinelli did decide to shop in Madera and ordered his signs from Andy's Sports Design. In fact Mr. Farinelli listed a payment to Andy's for $3298.66 for political signs between January 1, 2016 and March 17, 2016. If those are the same political signs Farinelli claimed were stolen and had a value of $100 each, my question for Rick would be where is the payment for the other thirty signs he told the police he still had.

If the $3298.66 was for the sixty signs he said he had prior to the Easter Weekend theft, that means he only paid around $55 for each sign and not the $100 he listed on the police report. Why is there such a discrepancy? Why did he inflate the price to his contributors and the police?

Did Mr. Farinelli lie to the Madera Police about his signs? Did he file a false police report? Why did he lie to his supporters about the amount of his lost signs? Did he really lose thirty signs or just five? Did he file an insurance claim? Why didn't the guy know enough to continue the lie on his "California 460 Schedule E Form" (financial disclosures) so that we wouldn't find out the truth?

We don't know the answers to these questions because Rick Farinelli won't return our calls. In fact the supervisor has blocked the phone number of Big Valley News on his county paid and owned cellular phone he was issued in an attempt to avoid our questions. However we plan to present these questions to the chairman of the Madera County Board of Supervisors during public comment session at the next board meeting later this month.

"Under the newly enacted Prop. 47, any theft over $999 is considered a felony.  The police will be looking at the security tapes of several locations where the signs were stolen, including in front of Citizens Bank, GBS, 47^th Place, Howard and Granada and at the New Jack in the Box", Farinelli told his supporters. Funny he mentions nothing about how it might also be a felony to give a false statement to the police department.

Farinelli said, "For the past four years I have been fighting the gangs in Madera County—now we see that someone involved in the electoral process is no better than a gang-banger".

Interestingly enough during  the 2010 supervisor's race in which Farinelli won by less that 60 votes, the supervisor claimed to have been threatened by a teenage gang member at the front door of the Howard Road Save Mart Grocery Store in Madera while he and his wife were shopping.

In a Madera Tribune article on the alleged threat Farinelli claimed the teenage recognized him from newspaper articles which featured Mr. Farinelli as being a "gang-fighter". In a town of 65,000 our local print newspaper has a circulation of around 3500. Which means roughly 18% of the population subscribes to the newspaper. It's nice to see that our local gang-bangers are keeping up with current events and reading the Madera Tribune when 72% of the rest of the town doesn't.

Isn't it funny how when he and his wife were supposedly threatened in public at a neighborhood Save Mart he wasn't interested in having the police review the surveillance video tape to find the criminal. But when his campaign signs are stolen, he wants every scrap of video in hopes of catching the thief.

I suppose everyone has their own priorities.