Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
It looks like the Sheriff’s union has been watching the same video clips that we have. You know… the ones where Sidhu stammers incoherently and fails to answer simple questions about union pensions.
That must be why they sent out this mailer with a photo of Harry sifting through a dictionary, as if to tell voters “Harry knows pensions. See, he looked it up!”
What a bumbling buffoon! It’s no wonder county unions can’t wait to sit at table with Harry Sidhu and negotiate their next pension spike.
One of the things we here at FFFF stand for is the idea of government accountability.
So naturally we were pretty sore when we saw the memo from County CEO Tom Mauk to the Board of Supervisors downplaying the disastrous purchase of the money pit at 433 W. Civic Center Dr. here.
Mauk finally produced the smoking gun—three years too late—an RDMD analysis estimating the needed cost to make the building functional. The amounts reached into the millions but for some reason this critical information, which was known to staff in June 2007, was withheld from the Board. Any guesses as to why?
Evidently Mr. Mauk is not interested in accountability. But we are, so please take note of the names of the people in the County Clerks office and the RDMD who were copied on this June 2007 memo. They are:
Phil Brigandi, Paul Lanning, Jean Pasco, Bob Wilson, Clark Shen, Mark Browning, Tony Ferrulli, Tony Mason, Michael Stein.
See any familiar names ? Jean Pasco in particular stands out since she was the clerk employee who acted as liaison with the Board in the matter of the building at 433 W. Civic.
This is not the story of an inadvertent error; no this was a deliberate attempt to mislead the Board of Supervisors and the evidence lies in the statements contained in the staff reports that deliberately mischaracterized the condition of the building and that were in fact untrue.
Hopefully the Board of Supervisors will be more interested in finding out what really happened and why crucial information that staff had been aware of for many months was intentionally withheld from them.
In a May 12th memo sent to the Board of Supervisors by County CEO Tom Mauk, it was confirmed by Mauk that Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly was less than truthful with regards to the acquisition of the $2.1 million money-sucking building that he decided splurge on with tax payers’ money.
Mauk says that “…it has become apparent to me that the Board was not provided with all the information known to staff at the time given the June 29th RDMD A&E memo among RDMD and Clerk-Recorder staff.”
In that sentence, Mauk confirmed what we have known for a very long time… that Tom Daly is deceitful and that he believes it’s OK to lie to the public and the Board of Supervisors.
Tom Daly lies so much that he can’t keep his lies straight. For example, in the same memo Mauk was told that “Since the acquisition of the property, the thirty-four spaces have been utilized and saved the County approximately $26, 100 a year due the ability to reduce the number of parking spaces the County leases from the private sector.”
We received several calls from Clerk-Recorder employees indicating that only one Clerk-Recorder employee parks at that parking lot. Guess who it is? Low and behold, it’s the wife of Disneyland’s Manager of Government Relations Chris Lowe. As reported in a previous blog post here, Disney has contributed to Tom Daly’s campaigns since 2002. Apparently the scampaign contribution not only led to a job for Lowe’s wife but also prime parking space. This has several long-time Clerk-Recorder employees fuming.
The truth about the parking lot is that it is being leased by Daly to a private company. The parking management company leases the parking lot and pays the Clerk-Recorder Department about $1,500 a month to manage the lot for profit. Any revenue above the $1,500 mark is kept by the company.
Does this sound like a fair trade off? Daly spent $2.1 million of tax payers’ money for a return of about $18,000 annually and 34 parking spaces. The math doesn’t add up! Daly is really putting his English major from Harvard to work here.
Look at the photos. The lot is clearly marked for public parking for $5 a day. This is a blatant lie to the Board and to CEO Tom Mauk.
The other baldfaced lie is that according to the memo, the department has reduced the number of spaces leased from privately owned parking lots for its’ employees. Since 2008, Tom Daly has been leasing about 17 spaces from Mike Harrah’s parking company Sycamore Parking Concepts to the tune of about $1,200 a month or $14,400 a year. This lot is located behind the run-down YMCA building on Civic Center Dr.
The best outcome for the money sucking building is that it be sold. If the tax payers are lucky they will recover the cost of the property and break even. However, the condition of the building is horrendous, per the memo. So I find it odd that Tom Mauk would say that “…having the property in our inventory is a positive outcome.” Is Tom Mauk covering for Tom Daly? Or did good-old friend of Tom Daly, Rob Richardson, write this memo without clearing it with Mauk or even verifying the information given. All Mauk or Richardson had to do was take a little stroll to the parking lot across the street and see that it is public parking.
Tom Daly is a red-faced liar and deserves to be voted out of office. Daly and company are running a misinformation campaign not only to voters but to the public, the Board of Supervisors and CEO Tom Mauk. Supervisor John Moorlach needs to call for audits of the Clerk-Recorder Department to see what other lies are uncovered.
UPDATE: I came across this earlier post today as I was thinking about all the political mail paid for by the “public employee unions” telling you what a great guy Harry Sidhu is and what a bad guy Shawn Nelson is. This video is worth a replay. Sidhu has an almost limitless capacity for clownish behavior — a perfect fit for the union circus.
Here’s another classic “what did he say?” mumble moment brought to you by Harry Sidhu at the GOP Central Committee meeting last week. We think he believes in public employee unions, but not in his ability to say no to them if they give him dough (directly) – so Honest Harry says he hasn’t and won’t take it. Even though he has been taking it ever since he first got elected in 2004!
In any case he says he won’t ‘take their money now. But just a few days before he had gone hat in hand to the Sheriff Deputy’s union to get their endorsement – and a big monetary expenditure via their IE, and he knows he got it. This is perfectly consistent with the profile of a politician without an ethical fiber in his being.
And that makes him a first class hypocritical hair ball and a worthy candidate for the John Lewis crowd to support.
What a guy.
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.
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?
While several county departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs, “Manager of the Year” Tom Daly seems to be on a mission to continue to waste public money the taxpayers be damned. We recently learned that a remodeling project for a “marriage ceremony and passport application acceptance room” is near completion. The cost to tax-payers: $73,000 plus change. For a remodel. Of a room. I’m pretty sure we won’t hear a peep from OCEA and it’s head thug, Nick “Bullhorn” Beradino. I’m still hoping Nick misplaced the bullhorn in some nook or cranny and is frantically looking for it..
I would like to invite OCEA members and the general public to come and see for themselves how this wastrel continues to shove his crazy spending down the taxpayers’ collective throat. From the looks of it, no expense was spared. But you be the judge.
The location is: Old Orange County Courthouse, 2nd floor
211 West Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana, CA 92701
And while you are at it, drive by the $2.1 million money pit Tom bought 2-years ago for his Sports Hall of Shame, at:
433 Civic Center Drive
Santa Ana, CA 92701
After you soil yourselves in anger, call Tom Daly at (714) 834-2248 and let him know how you feel about this wasteful spending.
I am providing the address because I want to make sure that the OCEA and Nick Berardino don’t get lost on their way to protest this wasteful spending just like they did the Board of Supervisor’s remodel last year.
Nick, if you need to borrow a bullhorn let me know. OCEA needs to tell Tom that this has to stop. The voters need to send Tommy boy a strong message this June. Vote career politician and free-spending Tom Daly out of office!!
By the way, it would interesting to know what the Board of Supervisors know about this latest misadventure. Wanna call up and ask?
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.”
I got an e-mail today from a friend of mine from Anaheim who isn’t all that politically active, but who saw the 4th District Supervisor WAND forum and has seen the videos of Hide and Seek Sidhu on our website.
Shock and dismay would be two good words to describe this woman’s impression of Sidhu. But I’ll let her speak in her own words:
I am aware that money is really all it takes to run a political campaign, but I have to say I am really and truly amazed by the campaign of Harry Sidhu. I know he doesn’t live in the district and I know he made up several addresses in order to run in the 4th. Okay. That’s pretty awful.
But what’s really bad is that the man is completely incoherent, has no grasp of any issues, and can only read what has been written for him on index cards. It’s pathetic. I would feel sorry for him if he hadn’t brought this embarrassment on himself. In fact, I really doubt if the man has a sense of shame at all.
At the WAND forum all I heard from this character were platitudes of the emptiest kind and even most of those were irrelevant. His performance at the GOP Central Committee meeting was humiliating – and embarrassing for everybody.
Keep up the pressure on this candidacy. You are doing an great job exposing this empty suit for what he is – an over ambitious, ignorant carpetbagger.
P.S. You can use my name.
M. Rodriguez
Thanks, for that. I couldn’t agree more.
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…
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:
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.
View the memo