Behind Closed Doors Archives - Page 65 of 73 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

A Tale of Two Toms

mauk-200x300 — Anybody can juggle one orange.

It’s not easy to look like you’re taking responsibility for some screw up or other when in reality you’re trying to spin as fast as you can to avoid accountability. But that’s exactly what seasoned bureaucrats do, and that’s precisely what County CEO Tom Mauk is up to now. It’s same old song: mistakes were made (passive voice, no subject of sentence), but corrective action is being implemented.

I have gotten hold of Mauk’s report to the Board of Supervisors about the massive fiasco in the County’s acquisition of the money pit at 433 West Civic Center – at the behest of the other Tom, County Clerk Tom Daly.

View the full memo

It would seem that the Board was never given crucial information about the true costs of remodel and remodel/expansion of the building. This data is shown in Attachment A to Mauk’s report, and is damning. Mauk doesn’t really even say he’s sorry for not passing critical cost information to the Board. The projected amounts developed by the County RDMD were significant – in the millions – and congruent with the ultimate figures presented by Kishimoto Architects, hired by Daly after the sale went through.

What information the Board was given was rosy: work on the building would be relatively minor, that the building was “reasonably maintained,” and that renovation would be done by Daly.

Wrong on all counts.

But everything is still okay, see, because the County has been using the lot for parking and has saved a whopping $26,000 a year. Mauk wraps up his report with this whopper:

“In the meantime, it does appear that having the property in our inventory is a positive outcome.”

Well only in government bureaucracies is wasting $2,100,000 on a near worthless property considered a positive outcome. I can only hope some Supervisor who really wants to supervise something will ask Mauk to quantify that statement. Mr. Moorlach?

Mauk may choose to do the Texas two-step around the truth, but I won’t. Check out the list of people CC’d at the bottom of that RDMD memo. The County Clerk was well aware of the millions needed to make that building functional and yet disclosed none of it to the Board; neither did the RDMD staff who created it. How come this happened? Mauk doesn’t bother to inform his readers. Hopefully the Board will be curious.

Was Daly hoping his $60,000 investment in Townsend and Associates was going to pay off with a big State grant that would cover the true costs to relocate the archives? If so that idea sure bombed big time.

What is inescapable is the conclusion that both the Clerk’s Department and the RDMD deliberately withheld the true financial implications of this acquisition in order to get the Board to go along with it. Is there another explanation? It would also appear that Mr. Mauk would now like the whole thing whitewashed.

So that’s the story. Now, who’s going to do something about it?

May 19, 2010May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies: Ventriloquism For Uncle Bill and The Little Kids

by Grover Cleveland9 Comments

billcampbell-240x300 — There's a little stick in back that makes my head swivel.

Sometimes its hard to tell whether certain people are stupid or lazy. Or maybe a little of both. Take, for instance, County Supervisor Bill Campbell who is currently the Chairman of the OC Children and Families Commission.

As a commissioner he has approved big PR contracts to his political pal Matthew J. Cunningham whom he also appointed to the County Parks Commission. And I mean really big contracts. And apparently free of either competition or real scrutiny.

Part of Cunningham’s job is to ghost write pro-commission “op-ed” pieces for politicians across the political spectrum who either can’t be bothered, or who are too illiterate to do it themselves. The topic of these scribblings is always the same: protect the tax revenue!

Here’s an invoice where Mr. Conservative Republican Wordsmith is wordsmithing hard for – Bill Campbell!

And looky here, we’ve uncovered the fruits of Mr. Cunningham’s labors in the OC Register.

There are some fun quotes about rigorous audits and Grand Jury approbation that come a-tumblin’ out of the old mannequin’s mouth, but these are my faves:

“I can say unequivocally that if state government emulated the prudent, sensible and farsighted operations and budgeting practices of the Children and Families Commission, there would be no state budget crisis.”

Uh, yeah, like handing out a $200K per year PR contract that enables your pal to put semi-intelligent words in your mouth for $200 an hour.

“…while our commission contracts out as many functions as possible so more dollars go toward funding services rather than bureaucracy.”

See comment above. Contracting out unnecessary PR crap for $200 an hour services like facebook updates, going to lunch with Steve Greenhut, and passing out toothbrushes. Newsflash Bill – that robs funding. Contracting out for unnecessary services is incompetent. Directing that largess to a political crony is despicable.

“Taxpayers should cast a critical eye on the idea of abolishing such county Children and Families commissions, which are locally accountable and manage their budgets responsibly…”

Uh huh. Yeah. Sure, Bill. You pass out hundreds of thousands annually for lobbying and PR most of which seems to be mysteriously directed outside Orange County. Well, Campbell also seems to be one of the masterminds behind the unintentionally hilarious Harry Sidhu for Supervisor campaign. And that, in a nutshell, really tells you all you need to know about that sawdust head.

And finally a free wordsmithing tip to the Wordsmith: when you’re going to put words in the mouth of numbskull try to avoid words like “panoply” and “unequivocally.”

May 18, 2010May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies – $3,200 for One Op-ed

by Grover Cleveland12 Comments

Was a ghost written “op-ed” worth the $3,200 that Cunningham charged the OC Children and Family Commission? You be the judge. Here is the article that found it’s way into some obscure journal. Notice how the supposed writer, Shawn Steel, starts off by announcing his opposition to prop 10. Sound familiar? Then begins the fight to save Rob Reiner’s legacy.

But really. How could this have taken the better part of 20 hours to produce? That’s two and a half freakin’ days! The Declaration of Independence was written faster.

The irony of the “we know the value of a buck” schtick written by somebody billing the taxpayers $200 an hour to hand out toothbrushes is profound.

And why can’t Shawn Steel write his own op-eds if he actually cares about this issue instead of wasting the CFCOC money? Of course he may not be very bright. For some reason he is a supporter of Hide and Seek Sidhu.

Anyway, here’s the Pacific Strategies billing that reflects the effort on that masterpiece. So what does that work out to, ten bucks a word?

More scary ghost(writer) stories to follow…

May 17, 2010May 18, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Watchdog Growls

by admin4 Comments

Teri Sforza at the Register’s “OC Watchdog” bureau has posted a truly alarming story about three graduate students who’ve done some great digging on the compensation allocated to OC City Managers. The figures are astronomical and the publication couldn’t come at a worse time for these Miraculous Mandarins who do so well at our expense. Here’s the compilation:

CityMangerPayola — Please try not to gag.

Be sure to check out the Fullerton row.

Thanks to Sforza for sharing. But the real thanks go to the kids who assembled the data – the real watchdogs.

May 17, 2010May 19, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Pacific Strategies – My Lunch With Greenhut

by Grover Cleveland20 Comments

This tidbit harvested from the Pacific Strategies billings to Rob Reiner’s OC Children and Families Commission was way too good to pass up.

Here we see Mr. Conservative Pundit Matthew Cunningham hard at work setting up and then eating lunch with former OC Register editorial writer Steve Greenhut back in 2008. Looks like Executive Director Micahel Ruane went along. Maybe Cunningham acted as interpreter between the libertarian Greenhut and the social services bureaucrat Ruane. I guess that’s what they call a business lunch.

I wonder if the suffocating welfare statists persuaded Greenhut of the need for their commission.

May 15, 2010May 15, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Gordo Gets Greedy

by admin18 Comments

Andy Warhol once famously said that everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. Apparently Thomas Gordon got his when he popped up on the Red County blog a couple of months ago with a semi-literate attack on Fullerton’s Shawn Nelson. Gordon is a low-grade goon from Santa Ana who is evidently acting as some sort of flunky in the Hide and Seek Sidhu jailbreak. Whether he is being paid in cash or El Pollo Loco chicken has never been made abundantly clear.

Naturally, we had some fun with Gordo here, here, here and of course, here.

Later we ran into Gordon at the NUFF blogger’s forum when he tried to intimidate one of our bloggers and ended up with a face full of Chris Thompson.

Apparently these brushes with notoriety have not provided sufficient celebrity for Gordon. The other day he started making obnoxious and gratuitously obscene comments here under the name “Major Nelson.” Busted. Well, hell we tolerate all sorts of stuff here, even the rantings of a useless nutjob and Sidhu stooge.

Apparently a sense of desperation is setting in on the three-wheeled Hairball Handcart, and with a fourth place finish looming on June 8th the small fry are getting agitated.

Sidhumobile — What kind of mileage will it get?

But seriously Thomas, if you want attention you’re going to have to start using your own name again, even if it results in another shower of ridicule. And another tip: if Sidhu is going to pay you to rip on Nelson you’d better be smart enough not to get busted. Of course intelligence is not an attribute widely ascribed to the Sidhu team members.

May 12, 2010May 12, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Water District Appears to Be Stonewalling For Disgraceful Director

by admin11 Comments

On April 14, I made a public records request of the Municipal Water District of Orange County to get the travel related expenses of Director Brett Barbre. You remember this fine fellow, don’t you? He’s the guy who was paid $48,000 by Tom Daly to “study” the idea of a sports hall of fame. He also kicked back $1000 into Daly’s campaign kitty. Now that doesn’t look very good does it? Especially for a Republican. Or for any honest man, really.

Part of Barbre’s supposed labors for Daly included a trip to Boston to visit some sports museum there (he never even bothered contacting the folks who started the first one right here in OC!). In his ‘report” he documented a side trip to Fenway Park. Barbre’s later plaint to Jennifer Muir that he paid for that Boston trip himself seems to have made an impression on the lassitudinous journalistic curiosity of Ms Muir, but not on mine. I wanted to find out if maybe the Boston junket itself wasn’t some sort of side trip already paid for by the Water District. I’ve just become so darn cynical when it comes to repuglicans.

And so I asked for Barbre’s travel expenses for the district.

Two week later on April, 28th (four days late) I got the District’s response from someone called Darcy M. Burke, Director of Public Affairs. I received no documents at all. What I got was an e-mail that attached a simple spreadsheet tallying Barbre’s expenses into periodic totals, presumably assembled by Burke. Not a single bit of specific information did I receive although I did get an unsolicited commercial about how much Director Barbre’s junketeering brings home to the Water District. Hmm.

Okay. So now I was really really curious about why they’re not releasing documents – just regurgitated, masticated, and useless pabulum.

Since April 28th I have left several messages and sent several e-mails following up with a demand for the specifics that should have been provided in the first place. All my efforts to communicate with the Water District’s Director of Public Affairs were met with a stony silence, until yesterday when Burke informed me that these things take time. And that only makes me more curious than ever about why she might be stonewalling.

Think they’re trying to hide something?

May 10, 2010May 10, 2010Behind Closed Doors

MORE MONKEY BUSINESS AT THE CLERK-RECORDER’S OFFICE; TOM DALY AND HIS PAY-TO-PLAY CONTRACTS.

by Grover Cleveland7 Comments

It looks like we can add another skill to Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly’s public money squandering resume. As previously reported here, not only does Daly excel at wasting public money and doling out jobs to his contributor’s relatives, it appears that he also hands out no-bid contracts to campaign contributors as well. It turns out that the contracts are more of what we’re used to: highly questionable and unaudited relationships, and of course, ultimate failure.

Get a load of this one.

Between 2002 and 2007, Christopher Townsend, who is the president of Townsend Public Affairs, contributed a total of $2600 to Tom Daly’s campaigns. During this period, Townsend was awarded two $60,000 no-bid contracts for “consulting services.” Townsend was awarded these contracts without bidding because of their supposed know-how in obtaining grants from the California Cultural Historical Endowment. What for, you ask?

In late 2005/2006 the grant application was for $150,000 to go to “planning” the archives expansion in the old Courthouse building in Santa Ana. Apparently the contract and the grant application were approved solely on the authority of Daly himself – that’s right, no Board of Supervisor’s oversight.

The big problem was that the grant application was for a building over which the “Manager of the Year” Daly had no authority. Apparently it is controlled by the Harbors Parks and Beaches Department that lets the Clerk-Recorder use it for some of his functions. And seemingly they had no clue what Daly was up to.

Even though Daly got the grant he wanted, the County had to turn the money back in April, 2006 because of the inability of Daly to communicate what he was doing with the other County bureaucrats. The official excuse was “unanticipated space and stakeholder concerns.” Translated from Bureaucratese into English: Big Daly F-up.

Well, there’s $60,000 down the toilet.

Undaunted by failure, late in 2006 the indefatigable Daly was before the Board of Supervisors asking for another $60,000 no-bid contract with Townsend. The motive was the same, but by now Daly’s covetous eye likely rested on the wretched building at 433 West Civic Center, a $2.1 million liability that he would talk the Board into acquiring in 2007. We shared that mess with you, here. The second grant application ended up with a big goose egg, however the purchase of the money pit on Civic Center Drive proceeded headlong, full speed ahead.

Dark-Clouds-looming-500x375 — A river of red ink runs through it...

Another $60,000 chunked into the water hazard.

Oh, dear me. Another Tom Daly fiasco; another example of incompetence and cronyism his pals in the media won’t touch; yet another mauve feather in the dismal repuglican headdress of Daly’s admirer, John Lewis (& Co.) who keeps insisting that the egregious Daly is some sort of “fiscal conservative.”

And good grief, we’ve only just scratched the surface. Be sure to stay tuned.

May 6, 2010May 6, 2010Behind Closed Doors

Time to End the Children and Families Commission’s Autonomy

by Grover Cleveland24 Comments

fartboy — It's almost always about the children...

The public relations and tax revenue fixated OC Children and Families Commission needs oversight. How do I know? Because of the amount of money these people pay to PR types and lobbyists – who just happen to be pals of Commission members. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, in fact.

Last year the Riverside County Board of Supervisors addressed the same issue when their “First 5” Commission members were busted for distributing grants to their own organizations. Here’s a 2009 article from The Riverside Press-Telegram that talks about the problem. The solution proposed by the Riverside BOS was to subsume their “First Five” Commission into the County government structure.

Whether or not this sort of thing has been going on in OC is not known without a complete shakeout. But what is known is that the Commission has been paying for things like toothbrush distribution and facebook editing at a rate of $200 per hour – to a Matthew Cunningham, a pal of the current Commission Chairman, and a running board occupant of the John Lewis political machine.

Then there’s the small matter of the hundreds of thousands contracted for lobbying services to Phil Isenberg as well as our own local big-government gold digger – Anaheim Mayor for Hire, Curt Pringle.

PringlePower — When you awake you will feel completely refreshed...

It’s high time to place this Commission in a chain of command that puts ultimate responsibility in the hands of elected representatives – people who will have to account for grants and contracts awarded to political operatives, and to decide what sort of political lobbying, if any, is appropriate. And that would be the County Board of Supervisors.

May 5, 2010Behind Closed Doors

The Huntington Beach Lesson:Us Versus Them

by admin8 Comments

Although I don’t think I’ll be doing much posting about non-contiguous cities in OC, something’s a brewin’ down in Surf City and a pretty rancid odor has wafted northward and reached our Fullertonian nostrils. What’s happening is a saga that should be an instructive reminder to us, and, alas, is far too typical of the prevailing attitudes within city halls everywhere.

The story is told in some detail over at the Red County blog by it’s proprietor, Chip Hanlon.

It happens that in 2002 the good folks of HB passed a charter amendment to require that the City allocate 15% of its annual budget to infrastructure. And naturally the bureaucrats in City hall have been ignoring the mandate ever since. Apparently they are counting debt service and other items as “infrastructure” in a way nobody ever intended. Millions of bucks are being deliberately diverted from city infrastructure.

And also, naturally, the HB City Attorney has cooked up a load of legal bullshit to back up the city staff’s self-serving interpretation of what the charter amendment really means.

It seems that people are finally talking about strengthening the language in the charter to make sure the switcheroo stops, and at least one of the employee unions made it clear that they will have none of it.

Sound familiar?

Anyway, the HB City Council met the other night to review recommendations from an ad hoc committee to address this infrastructure issue. They continued the item for a couple weeks, so it’s not over yet. Any takers on how they’ll go?

Its ironic that critics of what goes on in city halls are labeled as divisive. But the divide between ourselves and those who work for us is clearly demarcated and understood by the employees themselves, whose interests are sometimes spectacularly incongruent with ours.