The Contra Costa County civil grand jury "invited" Richmond City Councilmembers Maria Viramontes and Gary Bell to meet with the investigative body for a little chat last week in the midst of the city's $35 million fiscal crisis. The two councilors say they were asked because they are the current and former chairs of the council's finance committee. Of course, getting an "invitation" from the grand jury is akin to getting an "invitation" from an IRS auditor to discuss your tax return. The civil grand jury's job is to investigate government waste and fraud. Viramontes tells Feeder that jurors haven't formally launched an investigation of the city -- yet. "They haven't decided what they're doing," she says. As for exactly what grand jurors asked them, both Viramontes and Bell said they couldn't say.

Meanwhile, diligent Richmond city officials are contemplating clever ways to plug up the $35 million budget shortfall. One modest money-spig being considered: Tens of thousands of uncollected court judgments. Among those debts is a $4,000 judgment against City Councilman Tom Butt. But Butt says he has no intention paying it off. In his mind, he got tagged with the judgment doing what amounted to a public service. In the mid-1990s he sued the city to gain access to records he believed would show Richmond was giving Chevron an unfair break on the utility users' tax. A judge later ordered Butt to pay the city's legal fees because he had asked for too much information. City officials never bothered to collect, but acting City Attorney Everett Jenkins says he might now. Jenkins says the city has ten years to collect a judgment -- meaning Butt is still on the hook, though time is running out. "If it was a traffic ticket, I'd pay it in a heartbeat," Butt reasons. "But this is about the principle."