May 28, 2026May 29, 2026A Manfro All Seasons

More Monkey Business With the Budget?

If as is being claimed by “Erik” at Fullerton City News is unequivocally stating that Fullerton City staff has been unilaterally backfilling departmental funds without approval by the City Council. This would be unethical and illegal.

Elected officials have to approve these sorts of transfers from the General Fund as well as periodic budget adjustments. Period. Erik claims this has been going on for at least seven years and the amounts are substantial.

Erik uses this situation to suggest a City sales tax bailout is the wrong way to reward the bureaucrats who perpetrated this possibly criminal hairball.

Here is his post:

I’ve Got 24,816,001 Reasons To Not Support A Sales Tax

City Hall Spent $24.8 Million Without Council Approval And Now Wants A Tax Increase

Erik

May 21, 2026

Budgets are estimates, it’s an unpredictable world, and not getting it perfect is understandable. Fullerton City Hall staff and the city council are supposed to work together to determine how much money should go to each fund / department but ultimately it is the city council who, being elected, gets the final say on how we prioritize and spend that money. When council does this properly the residents are happy and councilmembers get re-elected, run for higher office, etc. When they don’t get it right they lose elections, get recalled, and/or face public scorn. The city council is our control mechanism over how our money is spent.

When a council appropriation ends up being more than what was needed, the remaining money can return to the General Fund without issue. When a council appropriation is not enough, the correct action is to request an increase from the city council. Again, city council is our control mechanism over how our money is spent. Staff does not have the legal authority to increase spending, only council does.

This is spelled out in City Municipal Code 2.68.030:

Prior to June fifth of each year, the City Administrator shall submit a budget for the coming fiscal year to the City Council for adoption.

And the restrictions given in City Municipal Code 2.68.050 which states:

C. Transfers of appropriations between departments and funds, or use of salary and accounts, other than those exceptions authorized herein, may be made only by authority of the City Council.

D. Expenditures in excess of the budgeted amounts are prohibited. (Ord. 1485 § 5, 1967).

This should be clear and simple. Need more money? Go ask council for it. However, it appears City Hall chose not to follow this practice (or the law).

During a conference call with a municipal finance expert, I was directed to the ‘Budgetary Compliance’ Section of the City’s 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR). They summarized that when that section is present in the report it means that something has gone wrong and in this case it’s by a lot. The ‘Excess’ column of this section lists money that city staff spent in excess of the council-approved budget and for 2025 it totals $11,148,422.

Consider for a moment what this means. Our only way of having a say over how our taxpayer money is spent is through the city council. They are elected to represent us and our interests. The municipal code confirms this is their decision to make. Yet in FY25 unelected bureaucrats at City Hall simply ignored the city council and the voters they represent and went and spent whatever they wanted.

Police couldn’t manage on their budgeted $61.3M? They spent $63.9M.
Fire couldn’t operate on $34.6M? They spent $36.2M.
‘Capital Outlays’ went over by $6M. This one is especially troubling because there’s no clear explanation of what those funds were actually spent on.

Put another way, the city council budgeted a total of $132.9M to the General Fund but staff spent $144.1M … $11,148,422 of which was without council approval. You might notice on the Revenue side that we brought in $8.9M more than anticipated and should have had a $5.4M surplus. But staff’s $11,148,422 unauthorized spending pushed us from a large surplus to a $5.7M deficit.

This is a complete disregard of good financial practice by City Hall. While some overspending covers legitimate needs, the lack of prior approval violates the process residents rely on, a process that does not include staff spending whatever they want and stashing it on page 105 of next year’s ACFR. Their actions were in direct violation of the city municipal code and are a slap in our faces.

But wait… it gets worse. Much worse. If this were a one-time thing I could almost understand. But, Dear Readers, City Hall staff has disregarded city council approved budgets every single year for the past decade. See for yourself:

gdfgdfgd — 2023: $455,176. And they were nice enough to put in a reminder that this was not legal spending.

Prior to 2021 accounting used a different format for the annual financial report known as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and the format is a little different, but the pattern of spending beyond authorization continues.

Starting in 2019 to present, staff has helped themselves to $24,816,001 of our taxpayer dollars beyond what our duly-elected council representatives legally allocated them. This money was taken without permission, outside of our established legal process, repeated every single year in recent history. This is an outrage.

Our current unrestricted cash reserves are $19.8M which, with a general fund of $144.1M gives us the current 14% reserve level. This is well below the council target of 17% and translates to 1-1/2 months. Had staff followed the budget all these years, our reserves could be as high as $44.6M which comes out to a 31% reserve level or 3-1/2 months. Or some of that could have gone to paving more streets.

But alas, it is already spent and gone and those who spent it are telling you to just give them more money via a sales tax increase. You should ask your councilmember how they feel about this, do they still trust City Hall, and what are they going to do about it?

We are being robbed.

Back to Harpoonville. This sounds pretty serious and I sure hope the crack accountants we have hired to check the books to explore a few facts:

How were these transactions booked and who authorized them?
Were the transactions simply glossed over in annual CAFRs and budgets without saying who approved them?
When, if ever did the Fullerton City Council approve these transfers? Were any of them ratified after the transfers were made?

We have already seen the City play fast and loose with Redevelopment Successor Agency funds as well as other non-discretionary funds to pad the invalid General Fund. That was bad. And in retrospect, maybe those transfers were just part of an overall pattern of misfeasance.

March 31, 2026April 2, 2026Boohooism

Jan Flory, Victim

by Mr. Peabody51 Comments

Sometimes you think you couldn’t make something up that is so ludicrous as to seem impossible.

And so it is with the case of Jan Flory vs. Fred Jung’s ballot statement that was determined on March 27th.

Not the outcome, per se, in which Jung had to change his designation from “Fullerton Mayor/Business owner” to “Fullerton Mayor/Businessman;” and had to remove from his statement the silly claim of opening 9 new parks and balancing a budget left unbalanced by predecessors.

No, Friends, the crazy, and unintentionally hilarious part was the last minute filing by Ms. Flory’s attorney meant to dodge a stay on the original writ of mandate. In this latest filing, Mr. Brett Murdock (who could not have possibly have composed it with a straight face) demanded immediate relief because Jung’s statement would cause poor Flory “irreparable harm.”

It’s pretty funny reading, all based on the premise that government is a business, and that business is hers:

“Petitioner Jan Flory is engaged in the business of government and politics“

A reputation is a terrible thing to waste…

The supposedly “practically libelous in nature” part is due to the implication that Flory – whose name does not even appear in Jung’s ballot statement – didn’t balance the budget during her fourth laborious canter around the Fullerton City Council track. This supposed assertion of her incompetence is said to impugn her professional political reputation; this so, so funny because every Friend is aware of Flory’s dismal record of incompetence and deceit on the City Council – from the years of Water Fund fraud, refusal to reform a culture of corruption at the FPD, Redevelopment disasters, and of course deficit spending, just to mention a few issues.

I have always hated you, and I always will…

And then there’s the specious and even more hilarious Murdock argument that if Jung were to win based on his ballot statement, it would deprive Flory of opportunities to possibly serve on one of the many County commissions and boards, some of which might offer remuneration:

“If published in the official election material, Jung is more likely to win the election. As a political opponent, Petitioner is unlikely to be appointed by the Supervisor to any of the County’s 85, (sic) boards, commissions and committees; whereas as a highly-qualified and prominent supporter of Traut, she may well earn an appointment.

Membership on a board or commission not only comes with political advantages, but pecuniary advantages as the County “pays certain board and commission members stipends for attending meetings.”

Other benefits—for which “it would be extremely difficult to ascertain the amount”—could accrue to prominent supporters of a winning candidate, including opportunities to be hired as staff counsel or prestige in the community as a lawyer or lobbyist.”

I can’t imagine which “community” would consider Flory as a lawyer – she quit her lawyering, good or bad, years and years ago. Flory the octogenarian lobbyist if Traut gets elected? Who’s kidding who? Her victimhood is based on not being able to be a political hack?

All of this adds up to very little, really, except to spread a little unintended humor to the good people of Fullerton.

February 1, 2026February 1, 2026About Us

The Strange Tale of the Missing and Reappearing Bushala “Puff Piece.”

by Mr. Peabody26 Comments

Here’s a strange story reported on the Orange Juice blog last week by Vern Nelson.

It seems that a post was published on the Fullerton Observer site in early January – a letter to the Observer Sisters from Miaad Bushala, niece of Tony Bushala. Her letter was all about how a Fullerton cop stopped her father, Albert, for rolling through a stop sign. Albert rolled down his window with the light of Christmas kindness in his eyes. The policeman, Officer Levin warned him about the dangers of such incautious motoring.

Officer Levin, under the influence of Yuletide kindness, and captivated by the kind quality in Mr. Bushala’s demeanor, did not cite the careless driver. Instead of a ticket, he kindly handed the wayward motorist a $10 gift certificate to a coffee place.

Subsequently, all of Mr. Bushala’s family appeared at police HQ on Christmas Eve with a plate of cookies, and a check for $10,000!

But then Ms. Miaad’s post quickly vanished from the Fullerton Observer blog, only to reappear virtually unchanged a few days later as an attempted news story in the Orange County Register, courtesy of Claire Wang. Most peculiar, no?

And finally, a few days ago, the very same story made its way back into the Observer, this time offered up under the byline of someone named David Spargur, who now cites the Register as a source!

How odd.

Vern Nelson noticed the switcheroo and contacted the Kennedy Sisterhood to find out why the original “letter” from the daughter about her papa’s kind generosity to the Fullerton Police Department was deleted. Nelson tells us that the story was removed at the request of Miaad herself who, upon further reflection, thought the thing appeared a little self-serving. That’s the narrative as told by Sitka Kennedy, anyhow.

And yet somehow the incurious OC Register got the tale, and for some reason decided to treat the donation as unquestionable philanthropy, and hence newsworthy; once the Register ran their bit the Kennedys obviously decided that it was okay to publish a redo. How come?

One observer, FJC teacher Jodi Balma, mentioned the Register article on Facebook. She called it a “strange puff piece” and reminded her friends that “Bushala” has lots of business with the Fullerton government at contentious meetings. This frequent Voice of OC “expert” had obviously mistaken Albert for his brother, Tony!

Jodi Balma knows a lot more than you do…

But Jodi, like the proverbial blind porcine, had unknowingly stumbled upon a truffle! As Vern Nelson reminds us, Albert Bushala owns numerous properties in downtown Fullerton that have nightclubs, and that he and his tenants have lots of business before the City Planning Commission that can use the kind assistance of a friendly police department.

Informed sources tell us that Albert Bushala currently has a Conditional Use Permit submitted to operate an events venue in the 100 block of West Commonwealth that will have a liquor license. Proposed hours of operation? 6am to 2pm.

November 1, 2024November 1, 2024Bad Cops

Hubris at the Observer

by Grover Cleveland64 Comments

You really have to hand it to the Kennedy sisters, Skaskia and Sharon. They are on the verge of perfecting dumbass hypocrisy.

Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.

For weeks and weeks they ignored the obviously phony 4th District candidacy of Scott Markowitz and made every effort to dismiss it as a non-story. When Marko was scooped up by the District Attorney and charged with perjury all they did was repost the DAs press release. When Marko plea bargained they then began to delete comments that questioned their obvious dereliction and bias.

When they finally reported the story of Markowitz’s guilty pleas, it was in their print edition – where nobody could comment at all, and where they continued to pretend that the fake MAGA candidate, hand-held by Democrat operative Ajay Mohan, was a real candidate, now dropping out, instead of what everybody knew was true: Markowitz was a plant to take votes away from Linda Whitaker to the benefit of Observer favorite, Vivian Jaramillo. The unstated implication was clear: Marko acted alone and any other conclusion was a Bushala conspiracy theory.

What all of this really means is that the Observer Sisters, despite their self-righteous posturing as an “independent news” operation, is just the opposite. Recent FFFF readers started catching on watching their performance on the Trail to Nowhere and the moronic Wilt on Wilshire where the two studiously omitted passing on relevant facts, but actively engaged in drumming up support for their cherished boondoggles.

Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)

Longer term Observer observers, of course, long ago cottoned on to the preachy sanctimony and bias of the Observers, noting the disparagement, snide innuendo, and outright lies aimed at their supposed political enemies. It’s been going on for 45 years and was the stock-in-trade of the paterfamilias, Ralph Kennedy. Just a week or so ago, while they were deleting comments they permitted a salacious and defamatory comment about Councilman Fred Jung.

Of course nobody is forced to go to the Observer blog, and except for the unintended comedy, errors, misspellings and factual errors and omissions, there really is no reason. Ditto the print edition that is still killing trees for absolutely no reason. On the other hand there is no reason anybody has to treat the Observer even with the modicum of respect one might give a legitimate news outlet.

October 15, 2024October 15, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Scott Markowitz Arrested For Perjury

by The Fullerton Harpoon43 Comments

Scott Markowitz, the phony 4th District Candidate was arrested by District Attorney personnel last night for perjury. He was booked into the Santa Ana City Jail.

As FFFF has continually claimed, Markowitz was a set-up candidate, created by prominent Democrats to draw votes away from Linda Whitaker to help her opponent, Vivian Jaramillo.

I’d sell out my mother for 10 votes, and I have…

Apparently, Markowitz’s nominating signatures were collected by somebody else, but he signed the affidavit claiming he did. That’s perjury, and substantiates our conclusions about the rest of the sordid scheme.

Perjury is a felony, and whoever set him up for this had better hope that Markowitz is willing to keep his mouth shut. If he sings he may very well incriminate the people who dragged him into this perjury, in which case we would have a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is also a felony.

Democrat Ajay Mohan is in this up to his eyeballs, of course. What about others? I keep hearing the names Ahmad Zahra and Aaruni Thakur, Ada Briceno and even Congressman Lou Correa.

Did Fullerton Observer Diane Vena know about this? She seems to have concocted tales to tell the gullible about the details of her participation. What about any of the other nominators? What about the Fullerton Observer itself, that has studiously avoided any mention of the perjury scandal.

The immediate question is what impact this will have on the 4th District election. Mass circulated campaign material has already tied Markowitz as a set up to help Jaramillo, so this is just more ammunition for the next couple of weeks. The beneficiaries of this news are obviously Linda Whitaker and Jamie Valencia, the former of which can point to the conspiracy as evidence of her own election chances.

October 14, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Flory Flips. Flory Flops. Sort of.

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

If you watched the so-called Fullerton City Council candidates forum a few weeks ago, you’ll have noticed something very funny.

New and improved. At least that’s her story.

On the question of marijuana dispensaries, candidate Janesse “Jan” Flory displayed some mental gymnastic exercises.

She first noted that on the City Council she approved Ahmad Zahra’s dope ordinance that would have allowed dispensaries within 100 of somebody’s house. That ordinance was crammed through at the end of 2020 before a new City Council majority could take over. When the new majority did take over they almost immediately pulled the plug on the ordinance in 2021.

At the forum, Flory claimed to have had an epiphany, in which she finally educated herself (a little late, no?) on the matter, and discovered to her surprise that the issues of revenue and impacts to communities had been overstated and understated, respectively. She had changed her mind, she said. Oopsy. Could Flory have been misled by her precious “staff?” Well, let’s not go to that inevitable outcome of Flory’s thought process.

But Janesse wasn’t through. After establishing her case against dispensaries she concluded that she was “on the fence,” a sort of tie the bow on the ribbon of saying nothing that really mattered.

Although she tried real hard to make herself sound informed and decisive, listeners still have no idea where Flory sits on the matter of marijuana dispensaries But where she sits doesn’t look very comfortable.

October 8, 2024October 9, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Case Against Jan M. Flory

by Mr. Peabody22 Comments

Well, she’s at it again. The old warhorse appears yet again to darken our collective doorstep with her presence. Janesse “Jan” M. Flory was on the Fullerton City Council from 1995 to 2003, then reappeared in 2012 like the Ghost of Christmas Past. And yet, she still wasn’t done, getting herself appointed to the Fullerton City Council in 2019, and continuing her history of incompetence, negligence and indifference to her constituents.

She’s running for the 2nd District council seat currently occupied by popular Mayor, Nick Dunlap. Her rationale? That’s not hard to figure out. She is running to protect Fullerton’s highly compensated and highly unresponsible public employees.

Flory must 80 years old if she’s a day, and Fullerton has changed a lot since 1994 – thirty long years ago, but Flory doesn’t seem to have changed at all. The sneer. The disdain for anyone not toeing the bureaucratic line, not accepting any bullshit emanating from City Hall.

Here’s a robotext recently received by a voter in Fullerton’s 2nd District.

Experience? We all know experiences can range from good to horrendous.

It’s nice to see Janesse let us know her campaign promises, because they remind students of Fullerton history that she was front and center of the disasters that she helped create. We can skip over the illiteracy of the writing and focus on the issues.

Fix our roads and streets? Who the Hell was running the City for 14 years while the pavement went to shit? That’s right, you, Janesse. “Saving” the ridiculous money pit called Walk on Wilshire? Really?

You want to hire more cops and firefighters? Who gave those guys the budget busting pay and pension increases? That’s right, you Janesse.

You want civility? Who treated her constituents like trash when they had the effrontery to stand up for themselves? That’s right, you Janesse.

And now for some fun history, yanked from FFFF headlines, a Flory of bill of indictment.

In 1994 Jan Flory, supported the unnecessary utility tax and actually proclaimed she wished it were doubled.

In 1995 Flory directed the City Attorney to disclose confidential legal advice in order to build a low-income housing project.

In 1998, and in years after Jan Flory cheerfully supported the illegal Water Fund diversion, a tax, to support her pals in City Hall.

In 2000 she supported the disastrous retroactive “public safety” pension giveaway, a breathtaking gift of public funds.

In 2000 she approved the $3,000,000 Poison Park, a Redevelopment acquisition of contaminated, gang-infested property on Truslow Avenue, an action she never acknowledged or demanded accountability for. The goddamn thing is still sitting there with a fence around it, 25 years later.

In 2012 she banded together with the cops to get herself elected, and then protected the Fullerton Police Department from reform. The Culture of Corruption continued unabated.

In 2016 she favored Police Chief Danny “C’mere, Big Boy” Hughes with a big, wet, goodbye kiss, three days after he tried to organize the cover-up of the drunken Wild Ride of City Manager, Joe Felz.

To get appointed to the City Council in 2019, she bribed the unemployed Ahmad Zahra with a lucrative seat on the Orange County Water District.

On her way out the door (again) in 2016, she supported the dishonest “bar owners map” for Fullerton’s first redistricting effort, allegedly created by the miscreant scofflaw, Jeremy Popoff that gerrymandered Jesus Quirk-Silva into a free run for City Council.

During the years of the Flory, Fitzgerald, Quirk-Silva, Zahra budget deficits, Flory lied to the public, insisting that the budget was balanced, when in fact, the City was raiding reserve funds to pay for increased employee contracts. Or maybe she simply doesn’t understand what deficit spending means.

No On S — Don’t Reward the City’s Stupidity

In 2019 Flory embarked with Zahra, Quirk-Silva, and Fitzgerald on an idiotic, spiteful legal vendetta against this blog, Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee, that cost Fullerton upwards of a million dollars in settlement and legal fees.

In 2020, on her way out the door for the third time, she voted in favor of Measure S, the ill-fated sales tax increase for which she was put on the Council to support.

If there were time and temperament, I could examine even more closely Flory’s “experience,” but, really why bother? Why recall all the Redevelopment boondoggles she supported in the 1990s, or the Downtown booze culture that she helped create in the early 2000s?

Mu’u mu’us and wood beads: I have always hated you, and I always will…

Flory’s bile and animus, directed at anybody who challenges City Hall – citizens and taxpayers, has been going on since 1994 and is well documented.

She once proclaimed that the City department heads were “the heart of the City,” And that tells you all you need to know about Janesse “Jan” M. Flory.

October 7, 2024October 7, 2024Ahmad Zahra

The Return of Raccoon Boy?

by The Fullerton Harpoon7 Comments

Apparently, political campaign sign in Fullerton’s 4th District are disappearing. But not all signs. Just those of Jamie Valencia and Linda Whitaker. Now this behvaior has been going on since the first campaign slogan was scribbled on a cave wall, somewhere, but it took on epic proportions in 2022 when District 1 candidate, Ahmad Zahra, employed the services of marginal characters to remove the signs of his opponent, Oscar Valadez.

One of these individuals was caught and tagged: Raccoon Boy.

Fullerton Boohoo wants Vivian Jaramillo on the City Council, and no one more so than Ahmad Zahra, the egomaniacal miscreant who is desperate to become Mayor. And so I wonder whether Zahra and Dem Party Central hasn’t once again found work for Raccoon Boy and his ilk. We know it’s not a matter of scruples. Zahra, Jaramillo and Dem Central went so far as to create a fake candidate, Scotty Markowitz, whose only job was to get a pro-MAGA ballot rant on the sample ballot.

If any of the Friends espy these thieving creatures in the wild, please record their activities and send them on in. They often congregate at the water hole known as 7-ELEVEN. They are an invasive species and need to be relocated ASAP.

September 27, 2024September 27, 2024Ahmad Zahra

Small Business is Big Business

by Mr. Peabody15 Comments

That’s if you are Ahmad Zahra, the Fullerton City Councilmember who knows nothing about small business, but who does know a lot about self-promotion to people who don’t know better. Zahra likes to peddle his “economic development” wares, but is really just an unemployed parasite desperate for a paying government job. He doesn’t know anything about running a business large or small.

If you hurry you can make it to this morning’s “Small Business Forum” organized by Zahra, at the Fullerton Community Center.

This brilliant 2 hour event features the State Treasurer Fiona Ma who at one time was some sort of an accountant, but who has been a professional politician for a long, long time. She had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit a while back that cost the State $350,000 but, like Zahra’s assault and battery plea, the details are consigned to secrecy.

There are two panels optimistically labeled “dynamic” which seems pretty unlikely. One panel features a unionista and some stooge from the North OC Chamber of Commerce, an organization that stopped representing small businesses 25 years ago, instead currying favor with government agencies. What they could possibly discuss is anybody’s guess.

And I have a couple of questions. First, who authorized Zahra to use the City seal, and who is paying for the rental of the conference room at the Community Center?

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024"Dick" Ackerman

Defender of the Faith, Part 2

by The Fullerton Harpoon7 Comments

The other day our Friend, Fullerton Old Timer introduced us to man named John Phelps, a big donor to Vivian Jaramillo, Jan Flory, and in 2022 to Ahmad Zahra. He also was a big contributor to the failed City Hall sales tax proposal in 2020.

Fullerton Old Timer checked in with me:

You shouldn’t think Mr. Phelps is only a recent player in propping up Fullerton’s unaccountable Democrat councilcreatures, Be sure to check out his financial political activity to keep three useless Republicans in office in 2012; namely Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley. The Form 460s will tell you a lot about his dedication to protecting the people in City Hall.

Well, okay. I guess I can do that. FOT is referring to the Fullerton Recall in 2012 in the aftermath of the Kelly Thomas Murder by the FPD, an event that went global after FFFF published a photo of the “after FPD Intervention” picture.

The recall began in the summer of 2011 and finally occurred in June, 2012. The anti-recall campaign created by the loathsome Dick Ackerman, now a Fullerton lobbyist, was called “Protect Fullerton – Recall No”. Let’s see what Phelps was up to.

Hardly out of the gate, Protect Fullerton got a 1000 bucks from Phelps. And he was far from done.

In October, 2011 he kicked in a measly hundred dollars. Then he really got going.

In April 2012 he gave another $1000 to help protect the Three Tree Fungi and their Praetorian Guard.

Finally, he gave the anti-recall committee a whopping $5,000 in mid May, 2012. Overall, that’s $7100 to fight the recall that succeeded in June, despite Phelpses largesse.

But, wait. Phelps didn’t only cast his bread upon anti-recall waters – at least not directly.

He also contributed to the individual campaign accounts of the recalled. While the recall campaign was in full swing he gave Don Bankhead’s 2012 campaign committee, not Protect Fullerton, another $1000.

A few days earlier he gave $1000 to Pat McKinley’s campaign committee. Of course both Bankhead and McKinley kicked in those exact amounts to Protect Fullerton. I don’t know what he may given Dr. Dick Jones, because those records don’t seem to be available in the City Clerk’s webpages.

When the recall was won, Mr. Phelps directed his well-funded attention to the upcoming November 2012 election. Guess what?

In September, in a move full of pathos, he gave poor Bankhead another $1000 as the latter was trying, and failing, to get re-elected again. Another candidate, Jan Flory, who going for another lap around the race track hit the Phelpsian jackpot.

You read that right. 10 Big Ones to Jan Flory, who once proclaimed that “in her lights” the department heads were “the heart of the City.”

Flory, was almost through. In the summer of 2013 she started hitting up contributors again. Why? To pay off the $8,000 she loaned to herself in 2012. And Phelps was there to help relieve Ms. Flory of her burden.

Now, if you’re not counting, the total anti-recall and pro statist candidate contributions by Phelps in 2011-2013 is a staggering $18,350. Whether he was really investing in his warped concept of good government, or rather because he still had, or hoped to have business before the council, we shall never know.

What we do know is that the election of Jan Flory, after the promising months after the recall, has been a disaster for Fullerton. What happened in the subsequent years of mismanagement are with us still: no reform of an incompetent and corrupt police department and more cop killings; increased employee pension liability, more neglect of infrastructure, continuation of the Water in Lieu Fee theft, cover-up of City Manager drunken wild ride, more nonsense like Trails to Nowhere, Fish Farm Wedding Venues, Walks on Wilshire, more cop killings. And of course a massive deficit cliff threatening our solvency.

Mr. Phelps is a friend of the establishment, the bureaucracy, and whatever liberal causes he adores. He’s probably a member of the right clubs and contributes handsomely to charity.

But he’s no friend to the taxpayers of Fullerton.