TAKING A DEEP BREATH AND...
Did you ever have one of those projects that seemed so overwhelming that
you just didn't know where to begin? Well, tonight I'm facing that
challenge as I contemplate how to respond to non-elected councilman Steve Mensinger's commentary presently appearing online in the Daily Pilot and will likely be in print over this weekend. You can read it HERE.
SO WRONG IT CAN'T WAIT...
There is SO much in this commentary that cries out for rebuttal
that it just makes my head spin. But, even though this has already been
a long day, I'm going to give it my best shot.
"HE'S WRONG, BUT I AGREE WITH HIM"
Right off the bat Mensinger, in his attempt to criticize Jeff Harlan's most recent column, HERE,
basically agrees with him that he and his council-majority buddies
don't follow the traditional governmental process! That admission alone
validates much of what has been said here over the past 18 months and
should certainly provoke folks to investigate further. To him, though,
it's no big deal.
THE "INFRASTRUCTURE" MYTH
He justifies that behavior by beginning with, "...past councils neglected Costa Mesa's infrastructure needs to feed the public employee pension beast they created." That's a lie!
Past councils directed the staff to do assessments of the roadway
infrastructure and come up with a plan to improve the conditions. That
was done and progress was being made toward that goal. However, the
economic downturn that began in 2008 and included the failure of Lehman
Brothers - costing Costa Mesa $5 million in invested dollars - cause the
council and staff to re-trench and re-prioritize.
THE "RESERVES" MYTH
He says, "...past councils burned through more than $30 million in
reserves because they refused to properly right-size City Hall given
current economic realities." Lie #2. Previous councils
and senior staff, in their skillful management of resources, built up
those reserves specifically for the kind of catastrophic financial
situation in which we've found ourselves. And, before Mensinger was
appointed, those folks began - to use his term - to "right-size"
City Hall by offering retirement incentives, using furlough days,
freezing any pay increases and, eventually, downsizing the staff by
approximately 30% while attempting to maintain service to the residents
of the city.
THE "PENSION" MYTH
He says, "...past council policies have led to more than $250 million in unfunded pension and retire health benefits." Lie #3.
It's the economy, stupid! The kick in the teeth we all felt when the
economy went south was also felt by the CalPERS program. Their
management model failed to produce the returns necessary to maintain
funding of the programs, so the City - along with EVERY other city participating in the CalPERS system - had to fork over lots of dollars.
FAR FROM IT!
He says, "So yes, this Costa Mesa council has been different. We have put residents first." Lie #4.
Far from putting the residents first, this council - the one that only
took 3 votes to place him on - has done exactly the opposite of his
claim. They have refused to negotiate in good faith with the public
safety organizations and, as a result of their "no hiring without a second pension tier"
mandate, have required them to work long, long hours to keep our
streets safe. They violated their own rules and arbitrarily attempted
to impose 6-month layoff notices on half the city staff - which resulted
in the tragic death of Huy Pham and has caused chaos and millions of dollars in legal bills in this city for the past 18 months.
POLICE STAFFING
They arbitrarily imposed a police staffing level that reduced the
manpower levels to those not seen since the 1980s, ignoring the solid
advice of their highly-qualified consultants on the issue AND the best advice from Interim Police Chief Steve Staveley,
who finally resigned in disgust. Through their ignorance, incompetence
and stubbornness they attempted to impose a work schedule on the police
that caused chaos in the ranks and service levels to suffer. It was
finally overturned by Chief Tom Gazsi.
UNNECESSARILY DESTROYED A.B.L.E
A year ago they arbitrarily shut down the AirBorne Law Enforcement Program (A.B.L.E.),
which served our community and neighboring communities for more than 4
decades and had become the model on which all other municipal airborne
organizations were based. Despite the fact that A.B.L.E had
enough money in the bank to operate for two more years without taking a
cent from either Costa Mesa or Newport Beach, Mensinger's council forced
the closure of operations and the sale of all the equipment. We ended
up paying $13,000 per month for almost a year for a hangar we didn't use
and got fire-sale prices for the helicopters. Now we're paying $700
per hour for less-than-reliable service from Huntington Beach and the council crows about it.
FIRE SERVICE SUFFERS
Their intransigence about that second pension tier has prohibited Interim Fire Chief Tom Arnold
from implementing his revolutionary restructuring plan that will save
the city millions annually when it's finally installed. And, that same
intransigence has prohibited us from hiring replacements and has caused
hundreds of hours of overtime to be worked by the fire staff - something
that the council has used as an example of "greedy public employees".
TOP-HEAVY ORGANIZATION
Despite their demands for a second pension tier and draconian
belt-tightening via their outsourcing scheme, they authorized the hiring
of several senior level managers - some jobs given to people who had no
background in that kind of work and in positions that didn't previously
exist - in the Chief Executive's Office without any formal recruitment
effort and before the second tier could be implemented. That kind of
cronyism has continued to the present time. While every other part of
the organization has contracted in size, the CEO's office has doubled.
Of course, 18 months ago I joked that their perfect organization model
would be CEO Tom Hatch and a half-dozen contract administrators. Maybe that's where we're heading after all.
UNBELIEVABLE!
The list goes on and on and on. If that's their definition of "putting the residents first" you know we're all in big trouble.
BULLET POINTS
Mensinger goes on to list, with bullet points, other issues he feels rebut Harlan's characterization of this councils actions. He says that, "while sticking to the best governmental processes..." Well, remember in the beginning he admits they didn't do that!
His bullet points are that his council:
BUDGETS
"Passed the first two balanced budgets (without the use of reserves) in recent memory." He conveniently forgets to mention that they gutted several organizations and programs to do that.
HIRED EXECUTIVES
"Hired and promoted seven new executive level leaders, remarkable for the fact that they live in the city they manage." And this, in his alternate-universe kind of thinking, is a badge of accomplishment? He neglects to mention that we didn't NEED
many of those jobs and that most of them went to people with no
appropriate backgrounds without a competitive recruitment effort.
INFRASTRUCTURE
"Poured more than $20 million in infrastructure for the 2012-2013 fiscal year alone."
He conveniently neglects to mention that much of that work was already
on the schedule, that they sacrificed public safety staffing to
accomplish it and then dismantled the city street crew that would have done
much of the work in a more cost-effective manner.
PENSIONS
"Has taken a stand against the unsustainable demands of public
employee unions, bringing sanity back to the city's fiscal policies." First of all, we DON'T have any employee unions in this city. We have employee associations, which do NOT
have the authority to perform job actions - strikes, for example.
When you start from a foundation of ignorance, everything else you say
is suspect. "Taking a stand" is one thing, but the
failure to negotiate in good faith because the OC GOP leaders don't want
you to is entirely another story.
OUTSOURCING
"Explored the viability of outsourcing various city services,
identifying millions of dollars in annual savings by both privatizing
services and delivering in-house services more effectively." That term, "explored", is much too benign. What he means is, "We
took a meat ax to the established procedures, prematurely issued more
than 200 layoff notices, caused a kid to take his own life, had the
then-mayor demonstrate his callousness by not attending to our business -
he attended to HIS. We had wave after wave of layoff notices issued,
which tore the scab off that wound a half-dozen times for hundreds of
staffers as the council actions caused millions in legal bills to be
racked up by one of the most expensive law firms in the country, working
with an open-ended contract." His little exploration has now
potentially saddled us with an international firm to run our jail that
has recently become notorious by failing in their $60 million assignment
at the London Olympics. Oh, yeah, this foray into outsourcing has
turned out to be just dandy.
TRANSPARENCY
"Has made Costa Mesa one of the most transparent cities in the
country and nation, according to the Orange County Register, Orange
County Grand Jury and the national Sunshine Review." Well, maybe. Some of the "transparency"
initiatives have improved information flow and some have not. For
example, the new website - a $50,000 expense that may or may not have
been necessary - is a long way from being easy to use. And, where the
rubber meets the road, in those areas that are important, like the
timely distribution of agendas for city meetings, it seems like those
are slower and slower being revealed. Friday, for example, the agenda
notification about next Tuesday's special council meeting on Jim Righeimer's Charter
didn't get sent until almost 8:00 p.m. That's well short of the mark
for timeliness. And, the new telephone system is not customer-friendly
at all! With the reduced staffing we've become accustomed to delays in
call-backs, but the new system seems to stiff-arm you every step of the
way. Of course, we recently tossed aside the Information Technology
Manager position and the person who had held it for a decade. How does
that make any sense at all?
JIM RIGHEIMER'S CHARTER
"Has developed a charter that, if put on the ballot and passed by
the voters in November, would take back local control from Sacramento
politicians (the current charter was developed after seven months of
public input and literally hundreds of suggestions by Costa Mesa
residents)." I'm glad he saved that load of manure until last. First of all, the way Jim Righeimer's Charter reads today, the only ones having "local control"
will be him and his cronies. It is packed with his pet projects and is
devoid of effective controls to prevent abuse, corruption and
misbehavior by those in charge. Mensinger lies when he says that it
was developed with public input. Anyone paying attention knows that
nearly EVERY suggestion from the public for modification of the
charter document Jim Righeimer personally crafted by cutting and pasting
random phrases from a variety of sources was ignored. Not only
ignored, but ignored accompanied by snide, derisive comments from the
dais, as well. No, the document they will vote to place on the ballot Tuesday is
Righeimer's baby, designed to satisfy his masters in the OC GOP and to
finally get some of his vindictive, anti-employee schemes codified somewhere after
decades of failure. Don't let Mensinger or anyone else try to convince
you that this charter is good for our city - it's not.
NOT THIS CHARTER
As I've said MANY times, I'm not against considering a charter for our city. While three-quarters of California cities DO NOT
have charters and enjoy the considerable protections provided by the
state as General Law cities, 25% do work under the Charter form of
government. However, because they can permit mischief - as witnessed by
Bell and Vernon - it is essential that charters be carefully created
using the full intellectual and moral resources available in the
community. That means a commission or committee charged with the
creation of the document using significant public input so the final
product actually meets the city's needs. It does NOT mean a skimpy, inadequately safe-guarded, self-serving document created by one man.
REMEMBER...
Over the next few months the voters of this city will have several
opportunities to observe the candidates for city council. There are
presently nine people in the race and Mensinger is part of a slate that
has been touted by the OC GOP for months - even before any of them had
announced their candidacies. Mensinger, Colin McCarthy and Gary Monahan
will almost certainly be teamed to run against all comers and will
likely be the recipients of lots of outside financial support. As you
consider the candidates remember Mensinger's commentary and how he
played fast and loose with the truth. When he received three votes from
the council and accepted his appointment to replace Katrina Foley
on the dais he told the audience that what he really wanted to do was
be a coach. Well, I hope the voters will help him reach that goal in
November by providing him with plenty of spare time to pursue it.Labels: A.B.L.E., Colin McCarthy, Gary Monahan, Jim Righeimer, outsourcing, Pension Reform, Steve Mensinger, Steve Staveley, Tom Arnold, Tom Hatch, Transparency
