School Bus Safety Officials Indicted

Some people believe everything is for sale these days including the safety of our children:

Four City Department of Education employees were charged in a federal indictment on Tuesday with soliciting bribes in exchange for promising preferential treatment, including on safety inspections, to bus companies that serve thousands of special education students.

The indictment said the bus companies, which were not named, had paid bribes from the mid-1990s to 2007 for a variety of reasons, among them to get reduced fines for safety violations and advance notice of inspections that were supposed to be unannounced. The Education Department said bus safety was not compromised by the bribes.

We cannot be certain that bus safety was not compromised by the bribes. Violations were being overlooked.