A few days ago I decided to email Hieu “Hugh” Nguyen some questions about his plans for the Orange County Clerk-Recorder’s Office.
1. What is the first order of business, should you win the election?
Response: I will complete a management audit within the first 90 days to review the organizations structure, authorized positions, workload statistics, systems performance, customer service, communications with Title/Mortgage Industry, fee schedule and operations of Clerk, Recorder and Vital Records functions. This will be the basis of preparing a long-term plan supported by short-term deliverables. I want to improve services to customers, improve department morale and productivity and reduce operating costs. This effort will be coordinated with the Board of Supervisors and CEO and Human Resources Department.
2. What are the top three issues facing the Clerk-Recorder’s Office in the coming years?
Last week Nick Berardino and his goons at OCEA sent out mailers alleging that 4th District Supervisor candidate Shawn Nelson voted in his own business interest to and that he did something for the campaign contributor who owned the Fox Theatre in Fullerton. All nonsense, of course.
These were really lame pieces and probably got Nelson a lot more votes than they cost him. But this effort was quite revealing in that it demonstrates the utter hypocrisy and self-interest of “Bullhorn” Bernardino and his crew.
What? I can't hear you, Bullhorn.
While this guy is making up stories about Nelson, he has turned a blind eye to a real government miscreant, County Clerk, Tom Daly whom we have busted giving jobs and no-bid contracts to friends and relatives of contributors, as well as pitching over two million bucks into the worthless property at 433 West Civic Center Drive. Oh yeah, and then there was that $48,000 contract given to another campaign contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame.
The OCEA has watered Tom Daly campaigns with more than $4000 over the years, no doubt hoping the investment would some day flower into something that looked like a county supervisor. Instead it helped create an incompetent little emperor that has no accountability, no oversight, and whose fiefdom is rife with cronyism and kickbackery and wasted millions.
I guess he's talking about me.
I would love to believe that Berardino meant to put Tom Daly’s name on those mailers because I would love to believe that Berardino was venting his righteous anger at the wrong candidate. Yeah, right! The County’s public employee unions are going after Nelson because they are terrified of a real Board majority that will institute permanent and meaningful pension reform and conduct responsible contract negotiations.
But who knows? Someday maybe the OCEA will stand up to real corruption – even on the part of a Democrat. If they ever do they know where to come to get all the info they need. But I’m not holding my breath.
Now that Harry Sidhu mailers are landing in your mailboxes like confetti I thought it might be a good time to do a recap, just like FFFF did last fall about the cipher Linda Ackerwoman, in order to complete a character profile of the people that have lent their names to his fraudulent 4th District candidacy.
Can't be an empress without the dough-re-mi!
1. Sidhu is a perpetual office seeker. I’ve now given up trying to count the number of elective offices he has run for, or put out feelers for, in the past eight years.
2. Sidhu lives in an “elegant estate” – in the 3rd District.
3. Sidhu faked an address at the Calabria Apartments on Lincoln Avenue. Even though he never lived there he claimed he did under penalty of perjury (twice) that he did.
4. Sidhu cooked yet up another address on Lucky Way, in Anaheim, and proceeded to carpetbag the race for GOP Central Committee from that locale.
5. Sidhu is barely intelligible when he speaks; and
6. When Sidhu does speak he demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about County government, including defined benefits, etc. etc.
7. Sidhu has become the darling of the Sheriff Deputy’s Union that have already poured tens of thousands of dollars in mailers telling us the opposite of what we have already seen for ourselves.
8. Sidhu has accomplished zilch during his tenure on the Anaheim City Council.
9. Harry Sidhu is a rich SOB who will spend any amount of money to get himself elected something – anything.
And now Friends, let us contemplate the Harry Sidhu supporter. What self-respecting person would let his or her name be attached to such a rickety bandwagon? Of course that’s a rhetorical question. Here’s a hint: all the political connective tissue that bind these people to Sidhu attach at point #9, above.
I have my reasons. And they're all selfish.
And then there are those who also are willing to a support a non-entity like Sidhu not in spite of the fact that he is ignorant, but because of it.
The less they know the more we like it...
One fellow in particular supports Sidhu as his own personal puppet to promote his vast High Speed Rail boondoggle.
Harry Sidhu is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
And let’s not forget the worst of the bunch. The lobbyist whose former tentacled stranglehold on the 4th District office was lost when his boy Chris Norby left town.
You'd better get to wordsmithing for Sidhu, pronto...
Then there are the ones whose own ethical problems were so embarrassing that they actually were removed from “host committee” lists – proving that even Sidhu’s well had a slimy bottom.
Actually, that whole sports hall of fame thing was a total scam. But I've decided to keep the $48,000 and all my new shoes.D'oh!
Well, that’s certainly a rogue’s gallery. Sidhu’s campaign looks more like a jail break than a political campaign, and I apologize for having to inflict such tough love on the Friends. Still, in case anybody has any illusions about what Sidhu as a county supervisor means, just let your imaginations have at it.
A while back I became curious as to what exactly Renee Ramirez did as County Clerk Tom Daly’s #2. I had heard lots of unflattering things about her not really doing any work and I thought would avail myself of the Public Records Request process to take a gander at some of her records, including phone calls made and text messages. We provide a typical sample of her phone records, above.
We were warned ahead of time by the County that personal phone numbers would be redacted. But never did I expect what I got: page after page after page of blacked out phone numbers.
Good God! These people want us to think Ramirez made hardly any business calls during the course of a month? During one period of several days all the numbers are blacked out. And who were these people she was talking to? That must remain speculative for unless Renee tells us we shall never know.
So what gives? Are they trying to hide something?
The Clerk-Recorder brain trust.
P.S. As a point of interest I note that for a brief shining period Ms Ramirez was Tom Daly’s hand-picked successor. Guess who was squiring her around the OC GOP Central Committee, making introductions: our old pal Brett “Hall of Fame” Barbre. Coincidence? I think not.
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.
Friends, by the time I got around to posting this piece, Daly had modified his website, but not before I culled the quotations below. Notice how those generic accolades have been tweaked to the actual circumstances. Now they make the endorsers like Jordan Brandman look ridiculous. And boy is that par for Daly’s course.
If you thought that our Clerk Recorder Tom Daly was arrogant and lazy you were right. Get a load of this crappola straight from his website:
“I am proud to support Tom Daly to be Fullerton’s next representative on the County Board of Supervisors. The people of Fullerton can count on him to listen to our concerns and deliver results for our community.”
Fullerton City Councilwoman Sharon Quirk
and there’s this:
“No candidate for 4th District Supervisor offers the proven record of success that Tom Daly has achieved as Orange County Clerk-Recorder, Mayor of Anaheim and member of a local School Board. His experience will make a difference for all of our communities.”
–Molly McClanahan
North OC Community College Board Trustee
and this:
“Tom Daly is a passionate and effective advocate for our schools. He will be a strong voice for education as our next County Supervisor.”
– Jordan Brandman Anaheim Union High School District Board Member
Oh, brother! Daly quit on the supervisor gig several months ago, but apparently he is still confused about which office he is running for. Or he really wants to fool people. Or he’s really lazy. Or something.
Let’s see how long it takes before Daly does something about his lame ass website.
Last Friday afternoon KFI’s John and Ken got hold of our post on the subject, and shared with their listeners the amusing notion that Matthew J. Cunningham of Red County fame actually got paid $200 an hour to listen to their show one day last year.
Here’s what they had to say.
More publicity for the OC Children and Families Commission. Well done!
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.
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.
SafeOC just sent this mailer out across Orange County. The PAC is trying to put appointed OC Sheriff Sandra Hutchens squarely in front of the tsunami of public outrage over financial woes that stem from double-dipping, hyper-compensated public safety employees. Given all of the news coverage that pensions have been getting lately, it might resonate with more than a few voters.
SafeOC’s real focus is on the 2nd amendment and personal safety, so it’s no surprise that they call out Hutchen’s infamous “gun grabbing” tendencies as well.
Those guys don't scare me. I'm in this for the kids..
In our series documenting the PR/lobbyist hungry OC Children and Families Commission we have shown how they have employed local political operative and Red County blog bloviator Matthew Cunningham to propagandize their myriad big-government good works.
The toughest part of the job is thinking up new ways to spend all that gummint dough.
Of course you can’t really propagandize effectively unless you know what the opposition is saying. So enjoy this.
In January, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger called for First 5 California to be eliminated in his 2009-10 budget. Regional commissions would have taken a 60% cut in funding.
KFI radio broadcasters John and Ken went on the offensive, and Cunningham was right there listening in at $200 an hour to formulate his defense of the Welfare State. Here’s the invoice entry:
As I said yesterday, it’s way past time to put this Commission under the control of the Board of Supervisors so that at least contracts and policy can be authorized by elected officials in a much more public forum. And maybe instead of fixating on PR the kiducrats can concentrate more resources on actually helping poor children instead of well-off, hypocritical Republicans.
