Now that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association has weighed in on the issue of Fullerton’s 10% water tax with the suggestion of potential legal action, it seems an opportune time to consider the quality of legal support the City receives from its high-priced lawyers, Jones & Mayer.
Specifically, how can anybody explain the fact that the City Attorney Richard Jones has overlooked the obvious fact that the City of Fullerton’s in-lieu franchise fee of 10% was nothing but an illegal utility tax that was never substantiated by any objective study as required by Prop 218; and that it amounts to paying costs for alleged services that far exceed the actual cost of any services rendered to the water users, in violation of the State Constitution. Every year since he was hired in the early 90’s Attorney Jones’ bosses on the City Council approved water rates that automatically passed along this tax to the rate payers. Of course discussion of the embarrassing 10% add-on was avoided like the plague and was quickly dismissed when anybody brought it up.
Well, Friends, the answer is pretty simple: Attorney Jones wasn’t representing the interests of the people of Fullerton, he was representing the interests of the City staff and city councils who depended on that annual $2.5 million rip-off to close their General Fund budget gaps. That’s right, the General Fund that goes to pay the salaries of City employees; that goes to pay the Council’s stipends, insurance, and car allowances; that goes to pay the for the Council’s junkets to fancy hotels to attend League of Cities meetings; and that goes to pay pensions – including those gaudy six-figure pension bonanzas of Councilmembers Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley.
The reason for employing an attorney is to get sound legal advice, not to have someone tell you what you want to hear; or, even worse, not tell you what he thinks you don’t want to hear. But such is evidently not the case in Fullerton.
For Jones & Mayer placing the interests of the staff and defending the indefensible is nothing new. And the price tag for this string failures has mounted over the years. Let’s take a moment and reflect upon some of these issues. Hmm. So many to choose from. Here’s a sampling:
Good grief, this is pretty embarrassing. It’s clear that the City Attorney is more interested in harassing the citizens of Fullerton than in sticking up for their rights. And this seems like a pretty good barometer to assess the attitude of the council majority – Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley.
Attorneys are expensive for a reason… they’re supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. But once again our high-priced legal experts from Jones and Mayer have failed to impress.
In haste to find a new revenue generating scheme, the Fullerton Police Department worked with Jones & Mayer attorney Elena Gerli (of former bicycle nuisance fame) to draw up an ordinance that would raise towing fees and create a new “franchise opportunity” within the city. For Fullerton motorists, that translates to more fees for the same ‘ol service. But I digress.
A series of tow operators gave detailed testimony that passing the ordinance would be a violation of several state laws. The City Attorney then gave a sketchy rebuttal (more on this subject in a future post) that failed to mitigate the council’s concerns, Sharon Quirk-Silva quickly took the lead in sending the attorney back to the drawing board and calling for a study session to prevent another legal mess for our city.
Was our attorney outsmarted by a group of tow truck drivers? It seems like it. We’ll find out in a few more weeks, but not until they’ve squeezed out another round of billable hours.
Why do I feel like we’ve been here before? Let’s see… a bureaucracy’s insatiable desire to increase revenue combined with poor legal advice, leading to eventual lawsuits and thus diverting any potential “profits” into the welcoming arms of Jones and Mayer.
I don’t have the answer. Not yet anyway. But I know that the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones and Mayer has been making bank on Fullerton for over 25 years as City Attorney. And I know that that the dismal legal counsel has impoverished the taxpayers of Fullerton plenty over the two and a half decades. I’m not going to recite the litany of legal failures we can lay at Jones’s doorstep – not yet anyway; we’ve already been doing that for years.
For reasons that escape Council watchers, Dick Jones somehow managed to escape getting the boot between 2020 and 2024, and I can’t think of anybody outside the Council who knows exactly why. Generally we can conclude that at least one member of the Whitaker, Dunlap, Jung triumvirate was protecting Jones and his minions, since it is incomprehensible that either Ahmad Zahra or Shana Charles would dump this chump.
Jail is for the little people…
Dick Jones is nothing if not a politician, playing the angles to keep at least three council persons happy at any one time, even alongside legal debacle after legal debacle. It’s worked through 4 different decades thanks to Fullerton being Fullerton. The Old Guard didn’t care and didn’t want to cause trouble; they were easy to push and persuade without too much trouble. The lamebrains like Leland Wilson and Mike Clesceri were afraid of their own shadows. Norby, I’m told, was just happy that the job was outsourced. The other dopes like Pam Keller, Sharon Quirk and Jesus Quirk-Silva could not have conceived of anybody holding Jones responsible for the legal advice he dispensed. For a fixer like Jennifer Fitzgerald he was the perfect running buddy, trying to accommodate anything she wanted.
Is Jones & Mayer still have a pulse?
Well, now Whitaker is gone, and if he was the fly in the ointment for the past 4 years, we may soon find out. Will Council newcomer Jamie Valencia take an independent stand and actually review Jones and Mayer’s record of failure? I sure hope so. It’s time that the City Attorney started giving out advice that avoids lawsuits instead of getting into them, with the result that he gets paid even more for failure.
I don’t know if Ms. Valencia reads this blog, but if so I sure hope she follows that link, above. She would find stories of Jones & Mayer’s incompetence, self-service, and ghastly legal decisions that have harassed Fullerton citizens, given away public resources and cost the taxpayers millions going back 25 years.
I’m sure Jonesy has already tried hard to wheedle himself into Valencia’s good graces, because that’s what he has always done. Will she go for it?
Hanging on to Fullerton should be a big deal to Jones and Mayer in terms of the future legal partnership. And I’m sure Jones figures that the loss of Fullerton could jeopardize his jobs in other cities like Westminster, La Habra, and Costa Mesa. True, Jones is 75 years old and may not even care anymore. Still, the firm must go on, and the junior partners such as the terrier-like Kim Barlow and the obnoxious hand-job lawyer, Gregory Palmer may still have a few years of legal bungling ahead of them.
If you thought having a City Attorney’s office suing bloggers to cover up their incompetence was bad and unethical, you’ll love this:
Fullerton’s joke of a law firm Jones & Mayer has left their front steps in a state of decrepit disrepair for at least 6 months. Their office is located at 3777 N. Harbor Blvd, alongside a busy sidewalk. Imagine taking your young child for a walk, losing sight for a quick second, and then watching them crack their head open on that rusty steel mess, protected only by a 2×4?
Or how about working here under the assumption that that temporary railing is well-secured? Look closely, it isn’t.
Let’s see what constitutes a “public nuisance” within the City of Fullerton:
Who would have thought the City Attorney is the poster child of how best to violate 6.01.030 (A) and (B) many times over?
I hope the irony of this is not lost on you. This is a law firm who makes their living advising cities on “public nuisance” cases all over California, presiding over administrative hearings, and in some cases prosecuting land owners who refuse to make repairs for the very same type of neglect and disrepair pictured above.
Time and time again, the arrogance of City Attorney Dick Jones is just stunning. He interprets or disregards the law in whichever way is most convenient for his interests. In case you’ve forgotten, now would be a good time to review Dick Jones’ attempt to steal a pension from CalPERS by faking himself as a City of Westminster employee. He knew better then, and he knows better now but just doesn’t care, and that’s the problem.
Now that the City of Fullerton’s retaliatory lawsuit against FFFF bloggers Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee has finally done its inevitable Zeppelin Hindenburg act, some folks who promoted and nurtured the despicable assault on freedom are already trying to rewrite their participation.
Don’t get too close. They bite…
Kimberly Barlow, Esquiress of the lamentable law firm of Jones, Mayer and Gecko is saying she’s just “happy the City got its documents back” another disingenuous swipe at Ferguson and Curlee who never deprived Barlow of anything; her “happiness” is costing us $750,000, at least , but she forgot to tell the reporter this inconvenient fact.
Then there’s Sharon Kennedy, the (former, supposedly) proprietor of the Fullerton Observer. In a comment string at their blog, Kennedy is now denying her involvement defaming our bloggers and pretending that her involvement was strictly objective. Unfortunately for her, the facts suggesst a slimy collaboration with the City and Jones, Mayer and Gecko. Her “expert” who claimed that she hired him, produced an opinion that was a joint statement to the Observer and an official Declaration to the Court in the case. How that happened and who, if anybody remunerated this self-styled expert is unknown – so far, but it looks suspicious as all Hell. Commenters are questioning Kennedy, but she isn’t answering. And naturally, the expert conveniently backed up the long-since debunked statement of the City’s own “expert.”
Kennedy can claim innocence all she wants, but her track record of venom toward this blog and really toward anybody else whose honesty threatens the well-being of government employees is well-known, and the malice might be pretty easy to prove in court if anybody cared to hold her accountable.
Well, the rats can scurry off the SS Jones, Mayer and Gecko as quick as their little legs will hurry them along. But the facts are incontrovertible and somebody, and soon, is going to have to pay the proverbial piper – just like the taxpayers are going to have to pay for the horrible and intentional malice of City Hall and its lawyers.
It’s been 11 months and we still don’t have any answers, let alone accountability, over the forgery committed on behalf of the Florentine family with the apparent blessing of City staff.
For those new to this story, a fraudulent Conditional Use Permit “Master Application Form” was illegally modified to allow a tenet, Joe Florentine, to change the property rights of a property owned by somebody else.
When this story first came up, Dick Jones of Jones & Mayer, the City Attorney tried to run cover for the fraud by claiming that Florentine had standing to make changes to the property rights based on an old non-relevant case in San Francisco. What the City Attorney didn’t answer, and nobody on City staff has managed to explain to date, is why the City aided and abetted fraud and forgery?
Irrespective of the alleged ability of Florentine to request changes to his permitting, he didn’t have the right to falsify or forge a document.
115 (a) Every person who knowingly procures or offers any false or forged instrument to be filed, registered, or recorded in any public office within this state, which instrument, if genuine, might be filed, registered, or recorded under any law of this state or of the United States, is guilty of a felony.
We know that the Master Application Form was falsified, there is no question on that front. The area for the “Signature of Property Owner” was illegally replaced with “Signature of Applicant/Use Owner”. (more…)
Trying to look passed all of the bullshit the city has thrown at me
A quick catch up for those of you who might not know. The City of Fullerton is suing this blog, myself and David Curlee. We’re being sued for allegedly clicking on links on the internet and for this blog then allegedly publishing things from those links.
The city’s argument is, essentially, that we didn’t have permission to click links.
In discussing this issue lately I was reminded about a case from here in California from back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was Governor. What happened was somebody accidentally put an audio file online on the governor’s website that wasn’t supposed to be there and somebody from the Phil Angelides for Governor campaign found it and sent it to the press.
Immediately the California Highway Patrol (the CHP had authority) sprung into action to see if anybody had violated the CA Penal Code – the same section (502) that we’re accused of having violated.
A 38-page report was submitted and that was the end of the story.
Until now. To see if there were any parallels I put in a California Public Records Act request and got the 38-page report from 2007 and it’s findings are quite illuminating in context. (more…)
Yesterday Kimberly Barlow with Jones & Mayer, on behalf of the City of Fullerton, asked the Hon. Richard Y. Lee to change the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against myself and this blog. An exhibit to said TRO was NOT INCLUDED when the Judge signed the original order and Jones & Mayer wanted to substitute the list of files we were originally told we couldn’t publish, share or delete with a shiny new list that allegedly only included private records. Read about that issue in our previous post [HERE].
The judge denied Ms. Barlow’s ex parte request. While Judge Lee agreed he had authority to change the TRO, he wasn’t going to do so as he didn’t believe it was necessarily the “clerical error” Fullerton’s attorney was claiming. Chalk up yet another loss for Jones & Mayer.
During the hearing Ms. Barlow took umbrage with our opposition paperwork, specifically the part about costs. Here’s the relevant part from our opposition (emphasis added, linked [HERE]):
Finally, filing of the anti-SLAPP motion by the Defendants within a week of the date this lawsuit was filed, halts proceedings so that Defendants and the Court are not burdened by the time and ever-increasing costs incurred in response to a frivolous lawsuit.
Yet, at present, the Defendants have been required to incur the expense of filing multiple briefs, a writ petition, numerous objections, last week’s court appearance, and are now must oppose on the City’s ex parte request to reconsider a restraining order, a request this Court has already rejected. Currently, Defendants have incurred nearly $100,000 in legal fees, which despite the pending SLAPP motion, are continuing to increase.This is exactly the point of SLAPP suits: To discourage public participation by running up litigation expenses, even though the City’s suit is completely meritless.
Ms. Barlow didn’t understand how it could possibly cost so much to fight her nonsense. She claimed it couldn’t cost so much to fight a TRO that in her words had no effect because the exhibit listing the files had been left off.
How could it cost so much? Gee. I wonder.
Perhaps if the City Attorney didn’t co-mingle everything up to and including billable hours she would understand how every time our attorney responds to the City’s paperwork, filings, declarations (alone totaling 21 and counting with 4 declarations from Strebe, 3 from Klein and so on and so forth), it costs money. There are more pages in those declarations than the first two Harry Potter novels combined. Plus every time our attorney has to read an email, field a phone call, talk to media on our behalf and show up to court, it costs us money. Every time the City does something, she informs us, which costs us money. And on and on.
We’re a month into this process, with three months to go before the anti-SLAPP motion, and we’re already staring down $100k. Imagine the bill when the dust settles. If our ONE attorney is racking up billable hours responding to the city’s filings, one can only imagine the costs being incurred over at Jones & Mayer in creating all of that paper they’re attempting to bury us under each day.
Yesterday, three weeks after getting it, Ms. Barlow went to court to argue that the TRO she demanded, received and then we had stayed, is incomplete. This mistake, which Barlow blames on the court, led to that hearing. Her appearance as well as our attorney’s appearance is costing billable hours and somebody is going to have to pay the piper.
We’re betting it’ll be the taxpayers.
As always we’ll keep you posted as to the details of this case as they happen.
Our city attorney just lost what is hopefully the final round in Fullerton’s red light camera case. A superior court judge denied the city’s request to re-hear the appeal of People vs. Franco, which was originally lost when the city attorney failed to show up at court last.
If you’ve been following along, you know that the red light cameras were a disaster from the very beginning. Fullerton’s contracted city attorney at Jones and Mayer allowed our city council to sign an obviously illegal contract for red light cameras to be installed throughout Fullerton. Thousands upon thousands of illegal tickets were given out until one recipient finally stood up and challenged the contract in court. Last year a judge found that Fullerton’s deal with the bankrupt Nestor Traffic Systems illegally gave the operator an incentive to boost ticket issuance by the cameras.
The most painful part of this story is that we kept getting those expensive legal bills throughout the entire red light camera circus, all the while being encouraged to continue fighting for this lost cause.
Someone close to this case wrote in to suggest that the city should sue Jones & Mayer for malpractice. If that’s an option, we certainly won’t hear about it from Richard D. Jones himself. How much longer will Fullerton pay for this bad advice? Will anyone be held accountable for this series of screw-ups? When was the last time that our contract with J&M was reviewed? It’s time for the council to admit that they were led astray and publicly address these issues with our city attorney.
FFFF received a fun email the other day, pecked out by Fullerton 5th District Councilman Ahmad Zahra. It is directed to Fullerton Assistant City Attorney Baron Bettenhausen, a fellow that the Friends met yesterday. Ahmad writes on January 27th, and is obviously still in a grand funk about losing his precious Walk on Wilshire the previous week.
We’re #1.08!
The tone of the letter is pretty unfriendly since Zahra seems to believe Bettenhausen has left out something real important in the discussion of Jamie Valencia returning campaign contributions. Of course, as we have seen, none of this would have been necessary if Bettenhausen knew the law and had known about the FPPC decision in Palo Alto before January 21st.
But let’s let Ahmad speak for himself:
From: Ahmad Zahra <ahmad.zahra@cityoffullerton.com> Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2025 9:55 PM To: Baron J. Bettenhausen <bjb@jones-mayer.com>; Richard D. Jones <rdj@jones-mayer.com>; Eric Levitt <Eric.Levitt@cityoffullerton.com> Subject: Conflict of interest question
Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.
Baron, at the last council meeting, you had opined that CM Valencia could vote on the matter of Walk on Wilshire since she had returned the campaign contributions to Tony Bushala and Cigar Shop owner, both of whom have direct economic interests in the decision. Community members have shared with me some concerns regarding your rendered opinion and I’d like clarifications from you.
Was the FPPC consulted on this matter, as has been the practice in the past on complicated issues (example: CM Charles votes on CSUF)? If so, where is their opinion letter and why was it not presented at the time of the meeting?
There’s been a claim that the funds hadn’t been actually returned even if the return check was issued. This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented. But it does bring up the question, what evidence did CM Valencia present to you and why was that not made public? This is especially relevant because that reporting period for campaign committees isn’t until Jan 31st, occurring after the meeting itself with no chance for the public to verify any of this.
In your opinion that night, while you addressed the letter of the law, did you factor in the spirit of the law? It seems to easy for anyone to take contributions, use them, then conveniently return the funds before a vote. This is especially important to know as CM Valencia was fully aware of the WoW vote since apparently it was a question asked to her during the campaign.
I would appreciate a clarification on these questions and would request that an FPPC letter confirming your opinion on this matter be made available to the public to prevent any legal issues. Any correspondence to the FPPC should also include the concerns of the public for a comprehensive review.
I am also requesting that any action to execute the reopening of Wilshire be delayed until such legal questions are resolved to avoid any legal challenges to the city.
Note: I am writing this email in the interest of the public and thus deem it and any response to it in the public domain and not under any lawyer confidentiality privilege.
Oh dear me. Where to start. Naturally, Zahra wants to make up and nurture a scandal where there is none. He’s obviously been stirring up an element of outraged Fullerton Boohoo to keep the red herring going. He even uses the same language as the Kennedy Sisters: “there’s been a claim,” and “This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented.”
FFFF first addressed the non-applicability of the law in question way back on January 21st. We know Zahra reads FFFF, but maybe he didn’t catch that post.
Anyway, Zahra wants to know if the FPPC has been consulted about this horror of horrors. We now know that the FPPC previously ruled on the identical issue in a case in Palo Alto. FFFF relayed that information, here on February 10th. The answer is clear as a bell: the law doesn’t apply. Bettenhausen should have known this before January 21, and maybe even before Valencia gave back money she didn’t have to.
Ahmad made me wear this and took a picture.
Then Zahra’s deep sea fishing expedition turns to the completely baseless “actual claim” that although a check may have been written, it wasn’t cashed, challenging Valencia’s integrity and Bettenhausen’s lack of diligence.
Zahra’s final numbered point is really funny. He wonders why the “spirit” of the law is not being upheld. Poor Ahmad should be addressing his lament to the State Legislature instead of his own attorney, but, whatever.
Here goes…
Zahra wants the FPPC findings on the issue to be made public, and he requests that WoW remain open until such time as the FPPC responds. Zahra’s worried about legal challenges? From whom? The Kennedy Sisters and Diane Vena? Man, what a failed Hail Mary. WoW was unceremoniously removed a few days after Zahra’s demand letter. Thousands more laughed than did weep at it.
Poor Ahmad wraps up his missive by letting his own lawyer know that this email and any response are free from attorney-client confidentiality – in the public interest, of course. That’s good ’cause we got it, Ahmad, being members of the public, and all. Was there ever even a response by Bettenhausen in the end? Who cares
