Mensinger, You Dolt! Shut Up!

AN ARTICLE CAUGHT MY EYE
I was heading to bed after a long day of contemplating my navel and our city, not necessarily in that order, when a "Watchdog" article by the Orange County Register's outstanding reporter, Teri Sforza, caught my eye.  It's titled, "Evening The Score On Disclosure", HERE, and addresses Senate Bill 331, recently signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.  I've written about it before.  It's known as the Civic Reporting Openness in Negotiations Efficiency - CRONE or CRONEY, depending on who's writing about it.  Sforza's piece is actually very good, as usual. 

THEN SHE QUOTED THE MAYOR
As I began reading this piece I thought to myself, "Well, this is old news.", but kept on reading and that's when I found this paragraph, in which she quotes Costa Mesa's mayor, Steve Mensinger.

"The unions are using the Legislature to spank us," said Costa Mesa Mayor Stephen Mensinger, who birthed the original Civic Openness in Negotiations ordinance that the unions hate, and that the county adapted and adopted.  "They're saying, 'you've been bad, and anyone else who wants to leave the plantation will be punished.'"

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!
"Leave the plantation"?  How is it possible for an elected leader of a city of more than 100,000 souls, well into the 21st Century, to blurt out such a racially-charged, insensitive, stupid comment like that?

CUT HIM SOME SLACK... I DON'T THINK SO!
Now, some of you will say, "Geez, West, just give it a rest.  After all - as his wife told us in his original swearing-in ceremony - 'That's just Steve being Steve'".  Well, if this was an isolated incident maybe, just maybe, I could cut the guy some slack - but it isn't.  He continues to spout malaprops and just plain dumb stuff in public forums.  He continues to chide and vilify speakers and fellow councilmembers.  And worse, he's unleashed his inner-dumbbell on social media sites, apparently thinking that anybody seeing that stuff will just smile and agree with him and think, "Well, that's just Steve being Steve".  Guess again, Steve-o.  We see it... we don't like it...  and we archive it.

HERE'S MY REQUEST...
So, using my 2,800th post on this site, here's my request to my mayor.  "Mr. Mayor, you're the top elected official in Costa Mesa.  You represent us, the residents, when you make public pronouncements.  So, when you get the urge to comment on something - DON'T!  When you get the urge to spit back some kind of epithet at a critic - DON'T!  In fact, to be on the safe side, whenever you get the urge to open your mouth on any subject - DON'T!  And, when you sit down at your keyboard or phone to type something you think is a clever comment or retort on a social media site - DON'T!  Not only do you demonstrate your stupidity, but you embarrass us as residents and probably embarrass your friends and family, too, but they won't tell you.  Well, I'm telling you - SHUT UP!"

Transparency Is A Double-Edged Sword

GOVERNOR BROWN SIGNS SB331
Well, kind of lost in the shuffle this weekend is the fact that Governor Jerry Brown, in a last minute flurry with many other bills last Friday, signed into law Senate Bill 331, the Civic Reporting Openness in Negotiations Efficiency Act (CRONE).  We've briefly mentioned this before.

TURNABOUT...
This act, described by many detractors as an attempt by unions to get back at jurisdictions that have adopted the Civic Openness In Negotiations process (COIN) by imposing a similar deliberative process over most big-ticket government contracts.  You can read about this act HERE.  I won't attempt to give you links to all the negative comments - just click HERE and sift through them yourself.

AFFECTS ONLY A FEW
Now it is law and the jurisdictions affected by it are ONLY those who have adopted COIN - like Costa Mesa, Beverly Hills, the County of Orange and a few more.

TELL STEVE HOW YOU FEEL
So, to those folks who govern those jurisdictions - like our Board of Supervisors and the elected leaders of Costa Mesa and the other cities involved - please remember how you got into this predicament.  You can feel free to write directly to our mayor, Steve Mensinger, the father of COIN and the man who has thumped his chest about it since he first fertilized the egg that became COIN in Costa Mesa.  Please, write to him to tell him how much you appreciate his handiwork, because without COIN there would be no CRONE.

EARLIER REQUESTS REJECTED
Some of you will recall that many community activists encouraged the city to adopt a similar rule for government contracts a couple years ago when COIN was being hatched, basically citing that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander", and that if the presumed-transparency derived from COIN in labor negotiations is something we desire, then similar transparency in government contracts seemed to be important to consider.  We need only look as far back as our now-notorious 60th Anniversary Celebration debacle - where cost-overruns ran into the tens of thousands of dollars - to see the value of such a program.  But those requests fell on deaf ears.  In fact, certain high-ranking members of our city government chided those who suggested it.  Uh, huh... well, here we are today with a state-wide law that focuses directly on those utilizing COIN.

LED BY THE NOSE
This is the kind of stuff that happens when a person who is not all that smart is being guided by those with strong anti-employee biases.  I don't for one second think Mensinger conjured up COIN on his own - he was just chosen to deliver this mess to a council with an unbreakable majority - a guaranteed pass.  It is this kind of lock-step mentality that generates initiative petitions all over town - people just don't trust their elected leaders to do the right thing.  Well, as the saying goes, "Karma's a bitch!"

AVOID "CHRONE" BY DUMPING "COIN"?
Now, as long as COIN is the law in those jurisdictions, the deliberative - slow - process described in in the CRONE legislation will have to be enforced.  That leads us to a question....  Since it applies ONLY to jurisdictions where COIN is the law, I presume those jurisdictions could escape CRONE by simply wiping COIN off the books, right?  I suspect some of those jurisdictions involved might just decide to do that, rather than be forced into a "transparency" situation that might make them more than a little uneasy.  We'll find out soon enough.

WHAT DO YOU CALL THEM?
And, what do you call a contractor whose presentations fall under this new law?  A "CRONEY"?  Seems just about perfect, don't you think?

"STUFF" HAPPENS...
A friend observed the similarity in sounding out the name of this new law - CRONE - and the intestinal disease, Crohn's Disease.  He snarkily observed that both are a pain in the gut and both will likely result in a whole lot of effluent being expelled from the alimentary canals - of the humans and the governments.  He may be correct.  It's going to be very interesting to watch this new drama play out.  I suspect we may have just found a new way to enhance the retirement fund of our contract attorney's at Jones & Mayer.  There may be a whole lot of legal stuff going on with CRONE.