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May 17, 2017May 17, 2017Behind Closed Doors

Rusty’s Bank Account

A while back some anonymous Friend dropped off what appears to be leaked financial statements from Rusty Kennedy’s non-profit, the Orange County Human Relations Council. The files didn’t receive much attention from FFFF at the time, but this week one of our readers recently pointed out Rusty has been down at the county begging for a new $250,000 infusion to fund additional employees for his private non-profit.

OK, let’s take a look at his financial statements. If you believe that this leaked budget is authentic (I do), an additional $250,000 per year from the county taxpayers would conveniently cover the Council’s projected loss for 2016.

Now that’s not very good, is it? Running a non-profit at a 20% annual loss is cause for concern. But of course this is a private 501(c)(3), so that’s normally a problem for Rusty’s private board members to worry about.

Or is it? What if Rusty is groveling for cash at the county just pay for existing expenses, rather than hiring the three new people as promised? The group already receives substantial funding from the county and local cities. Why should the county give more money to a group that can’t balance its budget? Furthermore, it’s hard to tell if there’s any real value in Rusty’s services, or if his organization offers any sort of efficiency. Program expenses aren’t identified in this budget at all. Why not?

Here’s one clue hidden within the documents: Salaries, Benefits, and Payroll Taxes account for 98.1% of their budgeted revenue. With salaries eating up the entire budget, one might wonder if this whole operation isn’t just some make-work project for Rusty and his friends.

There’s one more concern. Rusty has collected a lot of donations over the years by pretending that his non-profit is actually an empowered county agency. Many of his donors are misinformed, which is why the county recently insisted he stop using the county logo and misappropriating the name of the similarly-named Orange County Human Relations Commission. Furthermore, there is at least one board member who hold seats in both organizations – a glaring conflict of interest that the county has yet to resolve.

Altogether, these documents paint a pretty dim picture for Rusty’s personally lucrative public/private amalgamation. Will county supervisors continue to dump money into Kennedy’s opaque and unaccountable mess of an organization? And how much are individual OC cities paying into Rusty’s perpetual self-employment apparatus? Do Orange County residents receive any real value from this public/private partnership, or is it time to scrape this useless barnacle off the county barge?

March 30, 2017March 31, 2017Chronic Failure

Take Care of Your Toys

by Mr. Peabody17 Comments

When you were a kid your parents most likely told you what parents have been telling their children for thousands of years: if you don’t take care of your toys you won’t have any toys to take care of.

Too bad such admonitions are often lost on the custodians of public property. How often have you seen property owned by you and me left without proper maintenance or even abused by it’s supposed caretakers? It happens all the time, and with impunity. But how often have you seen a government actually refused resources because they can’t take care of what they already have? That’s right. I can’t remember a single instance, either.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

FFFF has already opined on the ridiculous waste of money, $4.6 million and counting, being poured into two new elevator towers at the Fullerton Depot – right next to the existing elevator bridge. Why? Because some other government agency was willing to blow the money.

It’s bad enough the new elevators are unnecessary; they are also in the wrong location since so many commuters will use the Harbor Boulevard underpass to get where they want to go – to the bridge that gets them to the huge parking structure west of Harbor.

But the most unkindest cut of all is the brutal fact that the existing bridge is a disgrace to the entire City. The glass elevators have been etched with so much tagging that they are becoming opaque; the paint, where it hasn’t peeled off, is discolored and oxidized; and the steel stair steps are rusted through. The deformed stair treads have been patched here and there with caulking, and that, too, is decaying.

So next time somebody like Jan Flory or Jennifer Fitzgerald sneeringly defends of the “experts” in City Hall, please point them in the direction of the Fullerton Transportation Center; and remind them that thanks to the ever-generous taxpayers nobody in City Hall has to worry about breaking their toys. New ones will always be handed out.

October 7, 2011October 7, 2011Big Brother

Fullerton Police Beating Complaint “Sustained” by Internal Investigation; Officer Named.

by Travis250 Comments

Wow! Remember this story we posted way back on June 14th? It’s about a guy who claimed to have gotten physically assaulted by the FPD, who he says robbed him, and threw him in jail. Back in June this guy’s story was assaulted also, likely by the same goons who beat him up. Officer Cary Tong was identified as the culprit in the case, and, perhaps we should start including his name on the FPD Hall of Shame roster.

In light of all the horror stories that have emerged from the FPD dungeons since we posted this story, it seems more credible than ever. I wonder if all the trolls who tried the hair-splitting approach to discredit him are having second thoughts.

And I wonder if this guy has had the good sense to contact Garo Mardirossian.

– Joe Sipowicz

When we posted a college student’s allegations of police brutality last week, several commenters responded by calling the victim a liar and saying that the claim could not possibly be true.

Well, here is the truth according to FPD’s own Internal Affairs department: the complaint containing allegations of brutality and theft was “sustained” against FPD Officer Cary Tong.

Read the findings (pdf)

The letter from Chief Michael Sellers calls officer Tong’s actions “inappropriate and not within policy,” and states unequivocally that “a finding of sustained means that the evidence indicates that the complaint was well founded.“

Officer Cary Tong was listed as both the arresting and booking officer that night, putting him at the center of the entire event described by the victim in the complaint. That complaint included a long list of violent actions against the young man while he was handcuffed, including the deliberate breaking of his finger, theft of his personal cash and several beatings both at the arrest scene and during his booking at the jail.

The opaque and severely limited disclosures made in this non-public letter are a direct testament the police union’s lobbying power, which has fostered laws and an internal culture that encourages police departments to protect bad officers and keep their abuses secret from the public. In this case, we still don’t know if the officer was punished with a light slap on the wrist or even disciplined at all.

In all likelihood, Officer Tong is still patrolling the streets of Fullerton. Shoot, he might even pull you over tonight.

April 15, 2011Boohooism

Epic Fail!

by Mr. Peabody18 Comments

Scott Martindale of the Register has posted this shocking revelation that two-thirds of JC students in OC fail to get any sort of diploma or certification after six years.

That’s a pretty damning indictment of a system that sucks in billions of tax dollars in this State every year and that is opaquely run by local boards of trustees composed of educrats, geriatric featherheads, and assorted big-government apologists.

Apparently, our community colleges are largely acting as baby sitters for late teens and early twenty-somethings who seem to be more interested in putting off a serious confrontation with the working life than with education. Harsh? Yes. Oversimplistic? Maybe. But consider that through the JCs in OC we are subsidizing the educational infrastructure for over a hundred thousand people at any given time who will never graduate.

And then contemplate the vast, breathtakingly compensated hierarchy of admninstrators that administer this Empire of Failure and tell me the system ain’t broken.

April 6, 2011April 6, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Why Hugh Hewitt Belongs on the First Five Commission

by admin20 Comments

Hewitt_Sterling_Travel_Panama_300x250 — A lot of Love on that First Five Boat

The other day we re-ran a post from last year questioning how repuglican yakmouth Hugh Hewitt was qualified to be on OC’s version of Rob Reiner’s tax and redistribute Children and Families Commission. See, we didn’t believe he could possibly meet the requirements for membership defined in the County ordinance.

Watching yesterday’s Board meeting provided some enlightenment and showed how much Supervisor BillCampbell, who chairs this ultra-liberal commission, wants Hewitt on there. Badly.

billcampbell-240x300 — Yes. It's a Do Tank.

As Campbell explained, Hewitt does indeed qualify in the education category. How? Because he is a director of the local branch of something called Young Life. I googled the name and found this. Not much to go on. No list of directors, so we’ll just have to take Hugh’s word for it. But check it out. It’s a Christian-based program for adolescents. This has zero to do with 0-5 child development and nothing to do with any professional qualifications for anything, so at least now we can be completely satisfied that Hewitt’s appointment was always bogus.

But as they say on TV infomercials: wait, there’s more!

According to Supervisor Shawn Nelson, who objected to Hewitt’s appointment, the latter missed seven meetings in a twelve moth period, and, per the code, was automatically removed from the Commission. Of course the Commission staff never notified the Board of Supervisors as the law requires. Hewitt was simply permitted to keep participating in the few meetings he was able to make, and was casually “re-appointed” along with the rest of the incumbents. And on that subject Nelson demonstrated that no solicitation for new members had ever been made – also required by the law.

So there you have it. A packed, opaque Commission doing whatever the hell it damn well pleases, and answerable to nobody, except presumably, its grossly overpaid Executive Director and his protector Bill Campbell.

February 13, 2011February 14, 2011OC's Fourth District

The Case of The Disappearing Board Members…

by admin18 Comments

At the OCTA Board meeting a couple weeks ago, 4th District County Supervisor Shawn Nelson lofted a proposal that the members of this fairly opaque (but very rich) agency who attend the meetings should only receive their stipend if they attend the entire meeting. Nelson’s idea was that in order to get that stipend, someone ought to actually earn it.

Well there’s a novel concept. Getting folks on the government dime to actually put in their time.

It seems that OCTA, and many similarly under-scrutinized agency and special districts are plagued by members who show up for only part of the meeting to qualify for their stipend, then disappear. And certain pols are most notorious for this behavior – more on them later.

Well, naturally Nelson’s plan went over like flatulence in church. You can’t expect the dope addicts to voluntarily give up their smack, now can you? But our thanks to Nelson anyway for doing the right thing. And to those who continue to rip-off the public: shame on you.

January 20, 2011May 23, 2011Behind Closed Doors

On the Water Gravy Train. Prima Ballerina Edition.

by admin7 Comments

Last week the Register’s Watchdog Teri Sforza did a piece on members of the opaque Metropolitan Water District Board who had racked up huge travel expenses soldiering onward for you and me in the great water wars.

Who’s well up on the list? Fullerton’s representative, Jim Blake, for one. Another is Fullerton resident wannabe Linda Ackerwoman who lives in Irvine but tried to carpetbag her way to fame and forune as our Assembly representative. This egregious pair racked up bills of $18,302 and $13,356 respectively, in 2009-2010. The biggest line item was lodging in for both.

It seems that Mrs. Ackerwoman got up on her offended hinders to defend the indefensible – with the usual blather about how hard she works for us, and the rigors of travel to engage herself in all these hyper-complicated issues. Of course the real truth is that if this job were so damn complicated she couldn’t do it in the first place. More truth: these trustees are hand-held and led along by their staff upon whom they are completely reliant. Which is no doubt why Madame Ackerwoman voted to jack up by 20% the rates requested by the aquacrats in the spring of 2009. See, the relationship is pretty symbiotic.

The fun Ackerwoman quote from the Sforza piece? Here it is: “the whole world of water is ballet.”

Wow! Thanks for that, Linda. Now go slip into your swimsuit!

And lest we forget Jim Blake, who has been on the Board since before water was even created, isn’t it time to switch to a more reliable, less expensive model?

January 3, 2011January 4, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Another Pringle Undertaking

by admin20 Comments

Cemetery1-300x225 — Der Pringle is dying to get in...

The OC Cemetery District sure seems to have a morbid fascination with failure.

Last year we reported on how the Orange County Cemetery District had employed Anaheim’s mayor-for-hire, Kurt Pringle as a consultant. Pringle was getting 6,000 bucks a month to find a new cemetery site, do PR, and act as a cemetery developer. Which was really pretty funny since Pringle is not a realtor, is not a landscape architect, and all the publicity the Cemetery District has gotten lately has all been bad.

PringlePower-300x225 — We have something really nice for you in mahogany.

Pringle’s been on the Cemetery District’s payroll for two years now, which seems like ample time to have accomplished a lot. Well, something. Anything.

But in these opaque, special districts nothing succeeds like failure, apparently, for tomorrow the Cemetery District Board of Trustees is being asked by their staff to extend Der Pringle’s contract even though so far he has accomplished virtually nothing for them. Part of the problem is that the Cemetery Board is independent of any real oversight; and the average age of the Board is something like 969 years old, so there seems to be zero sales resistance.

Renew!!?? Sweet Jebus! The Board ought to be suing Pringle and his Associates for breach of contract!

December 20, 2010Dead heads

The Tongue Bath

by admin5 Comments

We knew it was coming, of course. The last obsequious tribute of the ultimate repuglican lackey to the ultimate repuglican puppeteer. Still, it’s pretty gross even when you knew it was coming.

No mention of incompatible offices, or of directing hundreds of millions to pet projects, or of do-nothing contracts with opaque organizations like the Children and Families Commission and the Cemetery District; no mention of a financial interest Form 700 that’s over 60 pages long; and no mention of “freedom-friendly” up-zoning that cleared out huge swaths of light industrial employers and employees to make way for high-density condos built by buddies.

Well, what did you expect?

June 18, 2010June 18, 2010Behind Closed Doors

The Scandal of Government Lobbying Government: The Children and Families Commission

by Grover Cleveland10 Comments

A while back we posted a story about the OC Grand Jury callying for a lobbyist registry. They also attacked the practice of government agencies paying lobbyists to lobby other government agencies. Teri Sforza at the OC Watchdog did a post, here.

Yes, it certainly seems even more disturbing when practiced by opaque agencies like Water Districts and of course, by our old pals at the Children and Families Commission.

PringlePud — God bless America, land of opportunity!

As we have amply documented, this commission has paid Curt Pringle to lobby on its behalf and it has also employed the services of former State legistalor Phil Isenberg. Just yesterday we did a post about wordsmith Matthew J. Cunningham raking in some big bucks getting ready and attending a lunch for legislative staffers. Presumably the whole thing was a lobbying sales job.

The worst part of this of course, is that the OC commission is not lobbying for itself. No point in that – unless there’s a call to change the money distribution formula to benefit OC. No, all these hundreds of thousands of lobbying dollars are going to defend Prop 10 revenue in general. In other words, the OC Children and Families Commissions is spending all this dough lobbying for the other 57 counties’ First Five Commissions.

fartboy — Yeah, but those other counties don't have a wordsmith of my caliber!

Are these other counties lobbying themselves? Who knows. Not unlikely. But this just emphasizes the point that the whole thing is out of control – no matter how many times Cunningham ghost writes blather about how well run they are.

And while we’re at it, let’s remember The White House Writers Group and their six-figure contract to promote the commission outside around the country!

If you think about it the whole thing really stinks. Time to pick off the scab on the commission and see what’s supperating underneath.