The Auditor Who Paid Himself
A former Whitman County official cashed a cancelled warrant for his own campaign expenses years after he left office.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Smooth John Tobin, former populist auditor of Whitman County, has finally succeeded in touching the county treasury for $120 with a warrant which had been ordered cancelled. In March 1896, Tobin presented a bill for $120 for postage on a campaign document, which was initially rejected by the commissioners. When he presented it again in March 1898, two commissioners ordered it paid, but Commissioner Hinchliff intervened, and at the next meeting, the warrant was ordered cancelled. However, the commissioners failed to collect the document from Tobin. Last January, Tobin sent the warrant to a collector and it was cashed by the treasurer. Treasurer Windus later wrote to Tobin, now in Valparaiso, Indiana, demanding an explanation. Tobin replied: 'My act in regard to the warrant was not accidental. No, sir! It was deliberate, and what is more, it was right.'
“My act in regard to the warrant was not accidental. No, sir! It was deliberate, and what is more, it was right.”
Public officials treating the county treasury as a personal piggy bank is a tale as old as Whitman County. Tobin's brazen justification for his 'deliberate' collection of funds shows how political entitlement can manifest even over relatively small sums.
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