Watch Your Wallet Archives - Page 23 of 86 - Friends For Fullerton's Future

October 2, 2020October 2, 2020Fullerton City Council

Fullerton Admits to Criminal Incompetence

The City of Fullerton today admitted that they broke multiple laws in how they utilized Dropbox to illegally store what they claim are private and confidential files.

A few weeks back my attorney submitted a records request which the city just partially responded to today with any substance. There’s a lot of legal nonsense and lawfare going on here but one thing stood out related to Dropbox.

CPRA Fullerton Dropbox Response — No contract you say?

This is interesting because the Federal Department of Health and Human Services has very strict rules governing how you can and cannot store & transmit health information under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The two important issues here are known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the HIPAA Security Rule.

Basically you have to be smart in how you store personal medical files. To facilitate this Dropbox uses what is known as a Business associate agreement (BAA) which constitutes a contract. NOT ONLY do you have to sign this contract (electronically is fine) but it also, according to Dropbox’s terms, “must be in place before the transfer of [Personal Health Information] PHI from the covered entity to the business associate”.

The user, in this case the City of Fullerton, would also need to make sure THEY THEMSELVES comply with Federal Laws related to PHI.

Had the City of Fullerton’s attorneys done their job they would have seen this in the “getting started with HIPPA guide” from Dropbox:

“If your team handles Protected Health Information (PHI), you can configure your account so folders, links, and Paper docs can’t be shared with people outside of your team. When team members create shared folders, they can further customize the folders’ settings and choose the appropriate level of access — edit or view-only”

But wait – aren’t we being sued in part because we allegedly went to the City of Fullerton’s Dropbox account and “illegally” accessed files and information including personal heaslth records?

The City Council sure seemed to think that was the case. Back on 14 November 2019, City Council Member Ahmad Zahra asked me the following on Facebook (emphasis added):

“However, I’d like to ask you a question: Regardless of how or why it was obtained, do you hold in your possession any private and confidential city employee information that includes social security numbers, health records or other personal information?”

How would that be possible unless the City of Fullerton, who only alleges we accessed their Dropbox account, put such files into said Dropbox folder?

Because that’s exactly what they did – according to their own court filings they put these records into an unsecured Dropbox folder they opened up to the world.

Health Records on Dropbox

And furthermore, according to the City’s most recent court filing which was filed today:

Unaware of Access — They just ignored basic security because… reasons

“The City was unaware Appellants were accessing materials not intended for them to which the City had not specifically directed them or given them permission to access.”

That ALONE ignores basic access controls in clear violation of the HIPPA Security Rule:

“The standards require covered entities to implement basic safeguards to protect electronic protected health information from unauthorized access, alteration, deletion, and transmission.”

They city admits to putting PHI online and not verifying who was accessing, or even who had access, to such information. But at least they took the security of the files themselves seriously in compliance with State & Federal laws, correct?

Not even close.

“Unfortunately, City staff reused passwords, so that passwords to other files and folders within the City’s Dropbox account, to which Appellants were not given direction or permission to access, could be guessed by Appellants.”

“Reused passwords”. Let that sink in for a minute. Yeah, total violation of Federal HIPPA laws.

But wait, there's more! — But wait, there’s more!

Because Dropbox requires a Business Associate Agreement BEFORE you can place Personal Health Information on their servers, and the City claims they have no such agreement (ie contract) AND that they didn’t follow Dropbox’s access requirements, then they are in violation of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) & the state variant (CDAFA) for being, and I quote with a great bit or irony, in “excess of authorization”.

Jones & Mayer opened the City of Fullerton up to an unknown number of lawsuits with their wanton disregard for the most basic of security protocols.

On top of the hacking crimes against Dropbox, this is a Department of Health & Human Services Civil Rights lawsuit waiting to happen. No wonder Jones & Mayer are spending so much time papering the courts with bullshittery to hide their illegal actions and gross incompetence from the City. It’d be a real shame if the impacted people, who the city was legally required to notify, were to file federal complaints over Privacy [HERE] or Security [HERE] against Fullerton.

As an aside, the city claims emails referencing “dropbox,” “cityoffullerton/com/outbox,” “Fullerton!,” “Full3rtOn!,” or “synoptek” from 2015 to 10/24/2019 yielded 9,700 results. Even AFTER excluding “Fullerton!” & “Full3rtOn!” owing to the wildcard nature of the “!” they claim 9,700 results and they want about $21,000 to sort and redact them. They totally weren’t sharing this information we “hacked” far and wide. Right.

This is yet another example of how the City of Fullerton wastes your money. The cost to sue us is a colossal waste to taxpayers for the sole purpose of covering up the City Attorney’s mistakes and the impending lawsuits over HIPPA will likewise come out of your taxes without a single bureaucrat or attorney being held accountable for their crimes/incompetence.

October 1, 2020October 1, 2020Transparency

Just Like Covid, Fullerton’s Lies Have No Cure

by Joshua7 Comments

Don’t believe the lies being peddled by the Chamber of Commerce, Lobbyist hacks or the City Council. Covid-19 is just the perfect and newest excuse to put lipstick on the the pig that is City Council’s inability to spend your money with any responsibility.

Measure S Covid Lie — Exploiting the pandemic to cover up their incompetence

The City, which has been working on this sales tax for well over a year, simply wants to tax you more – the people with a median household income of $73,360 and a 13.4% poverty rate – so 300+ government workers can have total compensation packages worth over $100,000 and that $30,000,000 (30 Million+!) price tag is just the most obvious top layer of why Fullerton is broke.

So the government mandated lockdowns over Covid, the “two weeks to flatten the curve”, is just a convenient excuse for what the city has been planning for quite some time. Here’s the meeting minutes from the Infrastructure committee from back in January where City Manager Domer indicated, and I quote, “a need to raise revenue potentially through a sales tax measure”. That was 15 January 2020, 4 days BEFORE America’s first known Covid positive patient walked into a Washington clinic complaining of a cough and fever.

Sales Tax on INRAC — This has been in the works for well over a year

In fact, the city hired a PR firm, FM3, to poll people back in November of 2019 in order to gauge interest on a sales tax. This survey started BEFORE even China had a known positive case.

FM3 Survey — It’s been in the works ever since the city finally admitted we were right

That pre-Covid survey directly asked people, related to a sales tax increase: “Q. If the election were held today, do you think you would vote “yes” in favor of this measure or “no” to oppose it?” and gave a sample ballot measure that is remarkably similar to what is on this November’s ballot.

So don’t believe their lies and excuses as to why they so desperately need to tax you more now. The city wanted this tax long before the world knew Covid was a thing & will say and do anything to take more of your money.

Vote NO on Measure S.

September 30, 2020No on S

Tax Raiders Won’t Play Fair

by Mr. Peabody9 Comments

Well, really what did you expect. The political action committee that calls itself Fair Elections in Fullerton (or some other nonsensical bullshit) and that is promoting the 17% sales tax increase has been misbehaving. Not unusual, given that it is a creation of city employees and funded by union and there is a lot at stake for them.

Opposition No on S political signs have been destroyed and stolen, and replaced with Yes signs, signs that suggest our roads might be the beneficiary of our largess, and not true, of course.

Here’s a new ploy: actually covering No on S signs with their own, a shitty little tactic that fits so well with the entitlement attitude of our over-entitled “public safety” Heroes.

September 28, 2020Transparency

Your Roads Suck & Measure S Won’t Fix Them

by Joshua57 Comments

The City of Fullerton is spending your money to promote a new sales tax to you. They want you to vote yes on Measure S in order to raise the sales tax in Fullerton. Don’t be a sucker.

True, they’re promising roads and infrastructure and all of the goodies that government is supposedly designed to provide. The problem is that they spend exactly ZERO of your local taxes on these things right now.

Zero of your Property Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
Zero of your Sales Taxes go to the roads and infrastructure.
It’s the same with all of the fees and permits, licenses and so forth.

Despite taxing people in Fullerton to the tune of over $97 Million dollars, not one dime goes to the most basic of road work. Seems like we could fill a lot of potholes with +/- $97 Million dollars a year.

So how does our little amount of road work happen?

After the City squanders all of the tax money you give them directly, mostly on salaries and benefits, they then rely on OTHER government agencies to tax you further in order to do the terrible job they do on keeping your city nice. Remember SB1? When Newman jacked up the taxes on every gallon of gas you buy? Yeah, that was because your city government doesn’t actually care about your city and they use the State (where your vote barely matters) as bad cop to their incompetent cop.

Here’s a snippet from Fullerton’s budget to outline my point:

Zero Dollars to CIP — Don’t worry, they promise they’ll spend more if you give them more

That “-” denotes exactly zip, zilch, nadda dollars.

The City Council of Fullerton cares so deeply about keeping your city nice that they can’t be bothered to allocate a single dollar out of the $97Million General Fund – a General Fund that comes directly from your property & sales taxes – to basic upkeep.

I cannot stress this point enough.

Oh they’ll promise that they pave “8 miles of road a year” or whatever hogwash they’re peddling during election season, but in reality they can’t be bothered to tell a single union “No” in order to keep the alignment of your car from freaking out.

So where DOES that money go? Here’s a chart that sums it up:

Taxes to Public Safety — What a coincidence that those lines match up so nicely…

That is a chart from our own David Curlee showing Fullerton’s Property & Sales taxes that you pay laid next to the amount the City spends on Police & Fire. Notice how they line up? The Police Department eats every single dollar (and some) brought in to the City through Property Taxes and Fire eats all of your Sales Taxes. They don’t do that directly of course, they have accounting gimmicks and various funds to try and hide this from you but this is basic math minus bureaucratic bullshittery we’re showing you.

That’s right. That’s where ALL of your money goes and a large chunk of that is to pensions for guys who retire at 55 and will outlive all of us.

And along comes Measure S.

Much like Newman’s SB1 lie, Measure S is full of promises that require you to suspend disbelief and history in order to believe. The same city that prioritizes precisely ZERO of those $97 Million in taxes to keeping up our infrastructure NOW wants you to believe that they can be trusted to do the right thing with Millions more of your money if you give it to them.

Don’t do it. Don’t believe them. Don’t trust them. Don’t give them another dime of your money until they learn how to prioritize spending what they already take from all of us every year.

If you give them more money, they will absolutely spend every dollar on whatever strikes their fancy and when your roads still suck in years to come they’ll put their hat back in their hands and start the begging all over again. End this abusive relationship. They don’t steal from you because they love you, they do it because you won’t fight back.

Join the fight. Vote NO on Measure S.

September 21, 2020About Us

Looking Out for the Little Guy (who makes more than $200,000 a year)

by Sean Paden43 Comments

A few weeks ago the Fullerton Rag posted City Council-member Ahmad Zahra’s comments to the Black Lives Matter protest in Fullerton on June 6. It is interesting snapshot on an elected Democrat’s efforts to appease the party activists while keeping that sweet PE union cash flowing. It went about as well as you would expect (fast forward to 2:35 to hear the crowd turn):

The latest attempt to thread that needle comes courtesy of Faisal Qazi, a first time candidate who appears to be the Democrats de facto candidate for the Second District City Council race. His facebook page currently advertises a pro-BLM tilt, which one would presume would mean he opposes the longstanding practice of covering up for problem officers. However, this (since deleted) post shows a pretty strong blind spot where public employees in general are concerned, which should call that assumption into question:

Translated: “Lets go after all the waste in the system, except for all the waste in the system.”

Apologies to longtime readers (for whom this will sound like a broken record) but, according to Transparent California, there are almost 200 City employees making at least $100,000 per year. And that is not counting benefits (the $100,000 club has over 600 members in our fair City when benefits are included). On what universe would this be considered “already low wages?”

Oh, and for extra irony, try guess which department most of the public employees in the $100,000+ club belong to?

The problem in our local government, as friend of the blog Dave Zenger put it recently, is that too many people believe “the myth that (civil servants) are underpaid and hence deserve civil service pensions and protections. That may have been more or less true until the employees unionized, but it hasn’t been true for 50 years.”

And the result? Generations of “fiscal conservatives” on the City Council who voted for every pay increase that crossed their desk, followed, apparently, by generations of BLM supporters with a see-no-evil approach in their own backyard to the core issue that gave rise to the movement in the first place. And who will probably also vote for every pay increase that crosses their desk. This is why we can’t have nice things.

September 17, 2020Fullerton City Council Election 2020

Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform Launch 2020 Campaign

by Mr. Peabody37 Comments

The good government boys and girls over at FTR and their padrone, Tony Bushala, have jumped into the 2020 District 1 council campaign with their standard attack sign with the inevitable Barfman.

First, here’s the sign:

They have conflated candidate Andrew Cho with the pet project of his boss, Jennifer Fitzgerald – Measure S. Nobody seems to know where the guy stands on the proposed tax increase, but some reliable sources have heard him support it. And since it is the brain child of Fitzgerald (who hand-picked Cho out of a line up of anonymous Korean-Americans residents) we may assume, that he is for it.

Anyhow the sign seems to go after two birds with the same stone and that’s pretty smart.

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020The Cost of Defeat

Fullerton Loses Another $1.2Million+ of Your Money to Incompetence

by Joshua34 Comments

No, not against us… yet. Or against the Rock Wagner family for that Kathryn Hamel created wrongful death nonsense. You know the one, that’s the case that led to Hamel “resigning” and the city illegally dropping their sustained findings against her. Yeah, that’s gonna be a pricey lawsuit as well.

But no, this particular million dollar lawsuit stems from the Fullerton Airport Manager, Brendan O’Reilly, lying about when a hangar contract with former tenant Air Combat ended to illegally take said hangar from them to give it to the City Council favored/connected event company Hangar 21.

Air Combat Contract Lies — You have to wonder who was pulling O’Rielly’s strings to make his lie so often…

The ruling was aired live on Wednesday (no archived footage is available), and it hasn’t been released in writing yet, but for those who watched live were able to witness the jury side with Air Combat. The jury agreed that the City lied about the start/end date of Air Combat’s contract and awarded Air Combat $1.2Million in damages. That number will move around a bit as legal fees and other costs are calculated by the judge but it’s a huge slap in the face for Fullerton taxpayers and another black eye for CIty Hall / City Council.

Chalk one more loss up to Jones & Mayer and our incompetent City Staff. I hope you enjoy continually paying out for this nonsense because more is coming (see above).

It was an obvious case of corruption/incompetence at all levels of City Hall & Council that allowed this to happen and nobody, I repeat nobody, at City Hall is being held accountable for this million dollar loss that was entirely avoidable. And THAT dear Friends is the real reason the City wants to raise your taxes with Measure S – because being responsible with your tax dollars is just too darn hard.

September 16, 2020September 17, 2020Behind Closed Doors

The Latest City Scam – Campaigning for Measure S

by Joe Sipowicz25 Comments

It’s supposed to be illegal to use public resources in support of ballot initiatives, but of course the concept of illegality only applies to losers like you and me, and not to government agencies.

Here’s an example of the City of Fullerton blatantly using your money to propagandize you about the proposed sales tax increase, Measure S.

Tell me how this is not obvious political campaign propaganda from start to finish.

September 9, 2020September 9, 2020Bad Cops

The Sacrifice

by Disillusioned Ex-Hippy4 Comments

Whenever government gets itself into a bind, the first impulse of our bureaucratic overlords and their elected representatives is to resort to the taxpayers for relief. In Fullerton the case is not much different except that here, allegedly, managers and department heads have agreed to 5% and 10% cuts, respectively during our time of troubles. Likewise, according the the union boss, rank-and-file paper pushers have been told to accept the same 5% deal. Whether this gesture of sacrifice is meant to be reimbursed if the proposed 17% sales tax increase is approved by voters remains to be seen.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to ask whether anybody has requested the same sacrifice from our Heroes – the guys and gals who provide “public safety” services to us peons. Word out of City Hall is that no offers have been made voluntarily and none have been demanded. Could it be that’s because the Hero unions are much richer and much more political than the organization representing other city workers?

We are always being bombarded by Hero propaganda that promotes the selfless service and sacrifices by people who ride around in cop cars and fire trucks. Well, I’ll believe that when these worthy public servants step up to the proverbial plate and take the same haircut as everybody else.

August 7, 2020August 8, 2020Andrew Cho

Right Out of the Gate – A Scam

by Joe Sipowicz18 Comments

The other day FFFF introduced the Friends to Andrew Cho, some dude Mayor-for-Hire Jennifer Fitzgerald trawled into her net to run for the Fullerton City Council for District 1. I noted that his list of endorsers included the usual assortment of grifters, con artists and liars.

I’m not telling the truth and you can’t make me…

And now that he’s running as the stooge of this pack it should come as no surprise that his first campaign act is a scam – a violation of election rules regarding what you can call yourself on the ballot. Please observe, from the City Clerk’s webpage:

Whether Cho is more a lawyer with a dingbat law degree than a “businessowner” (by the way, that’s two words shoved together) is debatable. What is indefensible is the designation “Fullerton Parent” which is a blatant violation of the Election Code requirement for a candidate to describe his job or source of livelihood. Being a parent is not this clown’s vocation.

Section 13107. Ballot Designation Requirements

(3) No more than three words designating either the current principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate, or the principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate during the calendar year immediately preceding the filing of nomination documents.

One really is forced to wonder why the Fullerton City Clerk was party to this clumsy attempt to get some sort of advantage, but one gets a strong odor of Ms. Fitzgerald in the room making sure the bureaucrats do what she tells them to do.