The Chronicle reports on the peculiar memo requesting authorization for bonuses, and Carol Alvarado’s memory lapse.

A memo dated last April from a city employee who has been fired for receiving unauthorized bonuses asked then-Mayor Pro Tem Carol Alvarado to approve $5,500 in extra pay.

A spokesman said Tuesday that Alvarado doesn’t remember such a memo. She has said she didn’t approve any of the monthly bonuses that totaled $143,000 over about a year for four employees in the Office of Mayor Pro Tem.

(snip)

If Hernandez did send the memo, it could support — at least in this instance — her contention that bonuses were properly documented, though the four employees eventually collected far more than the amount requested in the memo.

Conversely, it could fit with the conclusion of police investigators that pro tem employees enriched themselves through misconduct that included fabricating documents.

I really don’t get why the memo doesn’t match the bonuses, but let’s follow the logic out: If the bonus memo was supposed to be legitimate, then the bonuses granted should have matched. (Caveat: the next bonus granted didn’t match, but it was only two weeks later. –Edit: Uh no, it was six. — Since that’s the length of the pay period, any approval by Alvarado, even if immediate, could have been caught “between cycles” and the bonuses paid four weeks later; add F&A/Payroll processing time, and maybe six weeks would be right.)

Assuming that there were no bonuses paid that matches the memo, it means that either the bonuses were paid in spite of the memo not being approved (illegal), or that the memo is totally bogus. If the memo is legitimate and Alvarado denied the bonuses, why doesn’t she remember it (especially since oversight is something she seemed to apply so rarely as to be notable); if the memo is fake, why would anyone make up a bogus memo? Presumably either to cover themselves, or (now the doublethink starts) to make it look like a clumsy attempt at employee fraud.

Now this is where the logic gets twisted. If someone is going to make up a bogus memo to cover themselves, why would they make up one that is wrong? “Useless” is the word that comes to mind. The only plausible scenarios for an incorrect fake memo by Rosita Hernandez would be:

1. She wrote it up but didn’t submit it, and then she also changed her mind about how much to request. Meanwhile, she forgot about the fake memo or accidentally filed it.
2. She got wind of the investigation a day in advance, wrote and backdated it, then inserted it into the file to make it look like she asked for authorization. Only being hurried, she got the amounts wrong.

The only explanation I can think of for a fake-but-inaccurate-memo from a third party (barring the intervention of Bill Burkett) is that someone planted the memo after the story broke, but they didn’t have access to the records of the actual payments, so either they guessed and the amounts didn’t match, or the amounts were deliberately wrong.

So why plant the memo? Either to embarass Alvarado by making it look like she is lying about knowing nothing about the bonuses, or to raise issues about the chain of custody and potentially where any of the records came from (especially if they embarrass Alvarado), or to confuse the crap out of me.

If it’s to embarass Alvarado, who is her enemy?
If it’s to raise issues about the chain of custody (“Where did this bogus memo come from and can we trust anything from that filing cabinet?”), it’s obvious who would stand to gain.
And if it’s to confuse me, well, mission accomplished. Hang that banner from city hall.