"Contract City" - A Remembrance

A PAINFUL ANNIVERSARY
As this Labor Day holiday approached a friend took the time to remind me that Monday is the fifth anniversary of an article written by Tad Friend and published in The New Yorker magazine about the events that happened in Costa Mesa a few months earlier.

AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE
Friend had spent a lot of time in our city in the spring of 2011, following the death of Huy Pham, trying to sort out what happened on St. Patrick's Day of that year.  The result was the article which you can read HERE.

 THEIR ACTIONS FULFILLED OUR GREATEST FEARS
It is with no small bit of irony that in the intervening years since he wrote his piece we've seen Costa Mesa municipal government staffing dwindle by fully one third and those jobs replaced by outsourced companies or contractors.  We've seen our public safety organizations intentionally shrunk to unsafe levels.  It's not really surprising considering the strong anti-labor bias by the current City Council majority.  Their actions over the past five plus years have demonstrated just how deeply they despise labor.

NOW IS THE TIME TO REMEMBER
As this campaign season heats up it seems like a perfectly appropriate time to revisit this issue as portrayed, not by local activists, but by a skilled writer with no skin in the game.

A LITTLE HELP...
In case you've forgotten what it was like back then, here are some video reminders for you.

THE NEWS...


THE WORST PRESS CONFERENCE EVER!
 
THE PUBLIC REACTION

Labor Day In Costa Mesa

CONTEMPLATING LABOR DAY
As we approach the Labor Day holiday - a time when most of us think very little about "labor" and a lot about trying to squeeze the last drop of recreation into a waning summer before either returning to school or going back to putting our collective noses to the grindstone - I thought it might be appropriate to provide a little perspective. I originally submitted this for publication in the Daily Pilot, but I was too late and too long, so here we are...

HOW IT BEGAN
According to the Department of Labor, this holiday was first observed on September 5, 1882 - 129 years ago - in New York City, following plans put forth by the Central Labor Union. The movement grew and the first Monday of September became an official National holiday in 1894. In most cases it has been celebrated with parades and other kinds of recreation and amusement - including speeches by politicians, which certainly counts as amusement.

NOT A BIG "LABOR" GUY...
While I'm not a strong advocate of organized labor, I readily admit that I have belonged to two unions in my working life. I was a member of the Retail Clerks as a box boy a half-century ago and, at roughly the same time, was a member of the Teamsters - one of Jimmy Hoffa's boys - a requirement for the job I had putting sticks in popsicles, but that's another story.


...BUT
I also readily acknowledge the part organized labor played in the advance of our nation to a position as the greatest industrial entity in the world. Without the efforts of those hardworking men and women - whose sweat and toil helped build this nation - things would have been very, very different for those of us who grew up during the last half of the 20th Century.

NOW I UNDERSTAND...
This year the Labor Day holiday takes on a more special, serious meaning for me. I view the labor/management relationship through a different prism now. Having closely watched events in this city over the past few months, for the first time in my life I can actually understand why the organized labor movement began in this country. This is the first time I can recall the leaders of a city in which I live taking such an aggressive anti-labor stand. It is the first time I can recall any local elected officials becoming so angry with the employees of a municipality that they willingly ignore their own operating rules to find ways to toss them into the unemployment trash bin. It's the first time I can recall municipal leaders fabricating a "crisis" to use as a reason to cast loyal, hardworking employees aside like a used Kleenex.

PLAN "B"
In March of this year, when it became clear to the new City Council led by Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer and non-elected councilman Steve Mensinger, that "pension reform" was not possible because contracts with the employee associations extended into 2014, a decision apparently was made to do the next best thing - get rid of those folks who would be eligible for the pensions. In discussions held in secret by a two-man sub-committee composed of Righeimer and Mayor Gary Monahan a plan was concocted to dump as many employees as possible by "outsourcing" their jobs to private industry.

IGNORING THE RULES
Unfortunately, they chose to ignore Council Policy 100-6, which was codified back in the early 1990s to facilitate just such an action. That policy described a methodology by which Contracting Committees, composed of relevant staff members would be formed, and calm, rational meetings would be held to hash out the technicalities of such an outsourcing plan.

THOUGHTLESS HASTE IS COSTLY
Instead, the council hastily issued 6-month layoff notices to 213 employees, including the entire Fire Department, on March 17, 2011 - St. Patrick's Day. The abrupt callousness with which this was done resulted in a day of turmoil at City Hall, the exclamation point of which was the tragic suicide of young maintenance worker, Huy Pham, who was called into work while recuperating from an injury to receive his notice but, instead, leaped to his death from the City Hall roof. It was on that day that Monahan chose, rather than going to City Hall to take charge of events and console a distraught staff, to stay at his pub, wearing his kilt, pulling beer taps on what he described at the time to a television reporter as "the biggest day of my life."

TURMOIL REQUIRES SPINMEISTER
In the nearly six months since that tragic day we have seen demonstrations - a rainy-day prayer vigil by more than 100 residents surrounding City Hall, shrines in Pham's memory placed at the site of his death in the parking lot and hundreds of speakers standing before the City Council, meeting after meeting, to express their anger at the way this issue was being handled - and a fracturing of the relationship between the City and its employees. Bill Lobdell, former Daily Pilot editor and, more recently, a columnist, was hired as the Interim Director of Communications by the city and has earned every cent of his fee. No city in recent memory has needed a Public Relations representative more than Costa Mesa the past few months.

MEDIA CIRCLED LIKE VULTURES
All this turmoil got the attention of the media - local, regional, national and international - and Righeimer became almost omnipresent on television, telling his version of events. We've had representatives of national publications - The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine, for example - visiting our city and writing scathing articles. Our once-proud city had become, not the tip of the lance in the battle for pension reform that Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh envisioned, but the negative example of how this issue should not be managed.

TAD FRIENDS COSTA MESA ADVENTURE
One of those writers, The New Yorker's Tad Friend, spent more than a week in Costa Mesa this spring, interviewing dozens of people, attending meetings and observing - trying to figure out just what was going on. The product of that effort finally hit print this week in the September 5, 2011 edition of that magazine. There, beginning on page 34, is an article titled, "Contract City - When a town's budget fight turned deadly". I summarized the article in my blog, HERE, and also provided links to access it online FREE and to a radio interview with Friend about the article.

FRIEND CAPTURED THE ESSENCE
In my view, Tad Friend captured the real essence of the situation here in Costa Mesa, and provided an insight that may have been missing from the dialogue over these past several months. He quotes many of the players in this drama extensively in his piece. For example, he quotes Jim Righeimer several times, including once when describing Righeimer's views on outsourcing. He quotes the mayor pro tem as saying, "We had one manager we had to write a three-hundred-thousand-dollar check for because he grabbed some employee's ass. We outsource that, someone else is writing that check."

MENSINGER AND HATCH
He quoted non-elected councilman Mensinger, when referring to the relationship between the employee associations and the city management, as saying, "I don't think the prisoners should be running the prison." I can't think of a statement that more accurately defines the view this council has of the employees who serve our city. The relationship between the council and the employees has gotten so bad that new CEO Tom Hatch, referring to the city council, actually told a gathering of members of the police department that "They don't trust us. They don't trust me and they don't trust you.".

POLICY 100-6 "DISCOVERED"
Eventually someone "discovered" the aforementioned council policy 100-6, and the Requests For Proposals for outsourcing of several units were canceled, the required Contracting Committees were formed and have begun meeting - just as it should have been done months ago. Had this process been followed back then, it is unlikely that young Huy Pham would have thrown himself off the roof.

SENIOR LEADERSHIP DEPARTS
In the meantime, almost every city department head has departed, leaving a leadership vacuum that only contributes to the unease at City Hall. City Manager Allan Roeder - the rock of stability that kept the city from budgetary disasters over the years - retired after serving the city for more than three decades, and was replaced by his able assistant, Hatch. There remains only one department head in place who held the same job last year at this time - Public Services Director Peter Naghavi. Most of the senior leadership positions have been occupied by consultants - hired guns retained to bring specific expertise to a city in chaos, but who have no long-term commitment to the city, its employees or residents.

STAVELEY SPEAKS OUT
And, the City Council majority has demonstrated, time after time, it intends to ignore the advice of those consultants retained for their knowledge and background. For example, they picked an arbitrary staffing level for the Police Department that met no rational criteria and ignored the sound advice of the consultants hired to do the assessment of the department and also that of Interim Police Chief Steve Staveley - who resigned in protest, leaving behind a scathing letter which, in part, called members of the City Council, "...incompetent, unskilled and unethical." This indictment came, not from a WalMart security guard, but from a man revered for his four decades of law enforcement experience and leadership throughout the state and nation.

OC WEEKLY HITS THEM AGAIN
Then, today, Chasen Marshall, staff writer for the OC Weekly, produced a multi-page tome titled, "It's Gotten Costa Messy in Costa Mesa", that is an excellent follow-on to Tad Friend's New Yorker piece. You can read it HERE. I suspect that the four members of the Costa Mesa City Council will be so thoroughly riled after reading these two lengthy articles that they'll approach next Tuesday's council meeting with elevated blood pressure and a skull full of epithets, ready to spit back at anyone who criticizes them - kind of like it's been at most meetings this summer.



TUESDAY IS A BIG DAY - GAZSI COMES ABOARD
Tuesday marks the first council meeting in almost a month - one that is packed with important issues. It will be preceded by the swearing-in ceremony of our new Police Chief, Tom Gazsi, at 3 p.m. in council chambers. Gazsi, a long-time Costa Mesa resident with a three decade law enforcement career in Newport Beach, brings experience and much-needed leadership to a department struggling to keep up with service demands as staffing levels shrink. I've met Tom Gazsi and think he's the right man for this job.

UNDERSTAND THE REASON FOR THE TURMOIL
As you mull over the circumstances in which our city finds itself over this Labor Day holiday, I hope you'll realize that this turmoil is the direct result of the political aspirations of at least one council member and the willingness of the Orange County Republican Party hierarchy to use our city as a Petri dish for experimentation without regard to the damage that will be left in the wake of their experiments. Apparently, in their view, Costa Mesa is expendable. As the crime rate rises and service responses in other areas of city government decline because of the draconian staffing cuts dictated by this council, please remember that a year from now you will be considering candidates for three council positions - enough to change the balance of power in this city and to return it to sanity.

IN THE MEANTIME...
Of course, in the meantime, you can always join those voices of dissent in the city - those few people who actually study the issues and dare to step before the council to express an opposing view. You can attend council and commission meetings and make your views known. You can write letters to the council expressing your views. Part of the reason our city is in such dire straits now is because this council assumes that, because there are not 110,000 people standing in the City Hall parking lot with pitchforks and torches, they must be doing a great job. They are not and they need more people telling them they're not. It's up to you...

Tad Friend's Great Costa Mesa Adventure**

NO THERE HERE
"Costa Mesa has no apparent center: if there's a there here, it's unclear where." And so begins staff writer Tad Friend's article, Contract City, in The New Yorker magazine in its September 5, 2011 issue, on the news stands today. (AUDIO LINK BELOW)

EXCELLENT WORK!
Let me say right at the top that I think Friend did an excellent job on his article. He spent a week out here from his home in Brooklyn researching this story. He provided a real flavor for what the city Costa Mesa has become and provides historical perspective of Orange County's roots and more recent history. He compares Costa Mesa to other contiguous cities - Irvine and Newport Beach and quotes Mayor Gary Monahan as saying, "When I first moved here, in 1987, I was always lost. You'd miss your turn and never get back."

COSTA MESANS DEFINING COSTA MESA
Friend went on to say, " Still, residents proudly define themselves in opposition to Orange County stereotypes, whether it's the tidy exurban monotony of Irvine, to the east, or the reality-show-ready opulence of Newport Beach, to the southwest. Pointing to their biker gangs and their barrio, Costa Mesans describe the city as diverse, tolerant, and - though it is heavily Republican - democratic."


"PANTSING THE TAXPAYER"
In describing the current atmosphere in Costa Mesa, Friend said, "But City Hall is now under fire from the budget-slashing wing of the Republican establishment, in a war of words and pink slips reminiscent of an earlier anti-union era, when the Pinkertons battered the Wobblies with fists and clubs. One local Republican official invoked a grade-school indignity to explain the uprising, telling me, "The labor unions have done a masterful job of pantsing the taxpayer."

RIGHEIMER AS "FRIAR TUCK"
"In Costa Mesa, the budget battle was gladly taken up by a new city council, driven by Jim Righeimer, a backslapping real-estate developer whose burly physique and eagerness to scrap call to mind Friar Tuck." I'm sorry, but when I read that comment I got a HUGE smile on my face.


MONAHAN - "AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM"
Quoting Monahan, "The fact that the unions went after Jim so hard, and the campaign was as dirty as it was, made it clear that we don't only have a budget problem; we have an attitude problem." Gee, Gary - no kidding! Although I suspect Monahan meant an "attitude problem" among the employees. I see it the other way - the attitude problem is among the majority on the city council.

MENSINGER'S WARPED VIEW
Quoting non-elected councilman Steve Mensinger, Friend said, "Referring to the unions and workers associations that the city negotiates with, Mensinger told me, "I don't think the prisoners should be running the prison". Later, when describing the "chest-bumping" event at Estancia High School, Friend said, "Mensinger told me he'd expected resistance - "Bring it on!" - but predicted that it would dissipate if his team held the line in the red zone: "Politics is very similar to Pop Warner. People think they can bully you into making their son the quarterback, but once they realize their son's a lineman they stop bothering you." It is ironic, don't you think, that Mensinger's son is a quarterback? What's that message?

RIGHEIMER - OUTSOURCE BAD BEHAVIOR AND SAVE MONEY
During a discussion of the number of units proposed to be considered for outsourcing, Friend quote Righeimer as saying the following: "The more the merrier, Righeimer believed. He said, "We had one manager we had to write a three-hundred-thousand-dollar check for because he grabbed some employee's ass. We outsource that, someone else is writing that check." Friend went on to say, " If you made government go away, you'd get rid of the problems it created, and the problems it was supposed to solve would take care of themselves."

FOLSOM'S FEARS
Addressing some of the concerns employees are expressing to him, he quotes long time employee and activist Billy Folsom: Billy Folsom, a Vandyke-bearded, steel-earring-wearing N.R.A. member who's been a mechanic for the city for thirty years, said that he and his friends were outraged by what they saw as the council's stealth attack on diversity, both social and economic. "What is our role here in a race to the bottom?" he wondered. "How much more do we let the middle class get slaughtered?" The fear, among unionists and many citizens, was that Righeimer's council would destroy the city in order to save it.

HIS PREAMBLE TO HUY PHAM
He leads off his discussion of Huy Pham with the following: Then, on March 17th, one of the employees who had recently received a layoff notice - a twenty-nine-year-old maintenance worker named Huy Pham - jumped off the City Hall roof.

PHAM DEFINED
In a description of Huy Pham that may bring tears to the eyes of his family and associates, Friend went on to describe Pham's background, what an excellent worker he was, quoting other employees, like his supervisor, Doug Lovell. "Lovell, who was very fond of Pham, said, "He could build a house from the ground up, and he always had his eyes open for things that needed fixing." Friend described Pham's struggles - including quoting from a disciplinary hearing he had last year because he was found asleep on the job, which was apparently due to him trying to juggle more elements in his life than he could manage. "A model employee, he was stretched thin by the demands of work, his family business, and getting his contractor's license."

RIGHEIMER'S DENIALS
Friend also discussed Righeimer's reaction to Pham's death, questioning whether it was actually a suicide - suspecting it was an accident and, later, the act of a drug-addled worker. He quotes Righeimer as saying, "How do I know it was a suicide? Because there's no parapet on our roof, and he hit head first. Does that sound like a guy jumping? That sounds like a guy tripping."

RIGHEIMER PEDDLING THE TOX SCREEN
Near the end of the article Friend talks about Righeimer calling him, urging him to put in a request for the coroner's report on Pham's death, stating "you need to see the toxicology." That report, the existence of which was reported by local newspapers, indicated that Pham had residue of a common metabolite of cocaine, which metabolizes quickly, so it was assumed that he took it more than two hours before his death. Friend concluded, "So when he stood atop the city's most public building he appears to have been under the influence only of his private concerns." Yep, that's what the final word on Pham's death said - he leaped.

QUOTING BERARDINO
Orange County Employees Association (OCEA) General Manager Nick Berardino is quoted extensively in the article. He was aghast when he heard of Pham's death. Friend quotes him as saying, "I'd never had a more sinking feeling," he said. "I was a machine gunner in the Marines during the Vietnam War, but this went beyond that. It brought home to me what's happening all over America - the vicious effect of the actions of a group of politicians who've demonized working people."

PRESS REACTION
He later describes Berardino's visit to Monahan's bar, where the mayor was busily celebrating St. Patrick's Day - which Monahan described on camera as "The biggest day of my life"- and of Berardino sharing the photos he took of Monahan with the assembled media at City Hall. "Berardino showed the photographs to news crews at City Hall, and Monahan became the instant symbol of civic callousness, a conclusion that was helped along when Berardino funded Internet ads showing Monahan in his kilt. The council's attempt to shape an alternative message - no one had been laid off yet, and there was no way of knowing Pham's motivations - was crippled by its hapless press conference the following day. After Tom Hatch declared that Costa Mesa was going to be the nation's most transparent government, he and the council members declined to answer questions. TV reporters savaged an ashen Monahan - "Is there no one that will speak to the people of Costa Mesa?" "you should be ashamed of yourself, sir!" - as he and the others walked out."

STAVELEY QUOTED...
Friend quotes former Interim Police Chief Steve Staveley - who's first day on the job the second time around was that fateful St. Patrick's Day - as he responded to Righeimer's version of the Pham death as follows: "Responding to Righeimer's imputations, the interim police chief, Steve Staveley, said, "I've been a policeman since these guys were playing in their sandbox at their mommy's house, and, with all respect to his elected position, he should educate himself before he starts shooting his mouth off. It's morally and ethically wrong."

...AGAIN
Later, near the end of the article, Friend again quotes Staveley: "Just before the budget passed, Steve Staveley, the interim police chief, had abruptly turned in a resignation letter that riled everyone up again. The council, he wrote, has "in essence lied as they created the appearance of crisis in order to appear as the white knight to a narrow band of political followers." The members acted "as if they are owners of the business that is the municipal government of the City of Costa mesa, but they are not, they are merely trustees of these public assets, both human and physical, and they fail in that role completely. They are, in my opinion, incompetent, unskilled and unethical." Staveley was right on the money, both times.

BAUGH'S INFLUENCE
Helping us understand the genesis of this ill-fated scheme, Friend addressed the issue of the influence Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh had on events in Costa Mesa. He said, "For Scott Baugh, chairman of Orange County's Republican Party, the outsourcing plan put forward by Jim Righeimer - with whom Baugh shares an office suite - was a long overdue attempt at fiscal sanity. In a speech last year, Baugh declared, "We're the most irresponsible generation this country has ever known... selfish, narcissistic, and dependent." and announced that he would no longer endorse any Republican who took campaign contributions from a union or voted for "outrageous" pension benefits."

QUOTING MOORLACH
Friend also included Costa Mesa resident and Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach in his piece and addressed his ill-fated, and very costly, attempt to rollback pension increases for deputy sheriffs. He went on to say, "But Moorlach remains willing to try almost anything to rein pension costs in. "The other radical idea is you just fire everybody and then rehire them as new employees at new tiers," he said, referring to contracts , now in place in Costa Mesa and many other cities, that provide lower benefits to new employees. he grinned and shrugged. "You're going to be in court on that one, too." he said."

RIGHEIMER QUOTE ENDS THE PIECE
Friend ended his piece by, again, referring to Righeimer. Here's his closing paragraph: "Righeimer noted that the Orange County Register carried a column that day about how Pham lived on as a martyr. The story concluded, "Some of his co-workers believe that Pham committed suicide to make a statement, and that he did it in a ceremonial fashion in keeping with his culture, taking off his shoes and neatly placing them to one side before jumping." There were no shoes on the roof, in fact, but regardless of that detail Righeimer dismissed the possibility that there was any foreign dynamic at work in his home town. "Oh, please," he said. "That's just bizarre. This is not some kid off the boat - he's an American."

FIND IT - BUY IT - READ IT (AMENDED*)
I did not try to cover the entire article, but had to provide you with some pithy quotes to whet your appetite. I've tried to give you a little bit of the flavor of Tad Friend's article in The New Yorker. He also quotes councilwoman Wendy Leece, Finance Director Bobby Young, activist Greg Ridge and employee association President Helen Nenadal. I strongly suggest that you go find it on a news rack somewhere and spend a couple bucks to read in context. It's well worth the time and money. Or, you can do as I did - go online and subscribe to the magazine and have it available to you in ten minutes.

** Try this! HERE'S A LINK that should take you to a page where you can get 4 weeks FREE online access to The New Yorker. That should give you access to Tad Friend's article.

TAD FRIEND ON RADIO
Tip of the hat to reader and commenter Gericault for a link, HERE, to a recent radio interview with Tad Friend on his article. This 17 minute snippet gives you a flavor for the content of the article and should make you want to find it and read every word.

Hot Feet Guaranteed

OUCH, OUCH, OUCH!
Monday evening the irrepressible Barbara Venezia will host the Feet To The Fire forum at Costa Mesa's Neighborhood Community Center, 1845 Park Avenue (Lions Park). The event begins at 7:00 p.m. and is scheduled to run until 9:00 p.m.

INQUISITORS
Joining Venezia will be Register columnist Frank Mickadeit, Daily Pilot Editor John Canalis, Newport Beach Independent Editor Roger Bloom and Voice of OC Editor Norberto Santana, Jr.

VICTIMS
They will toast the phalanges of Jim Righeimer, Colin McCarthy, Wendy Leece and Nick Berardino on the question: Should Costa Mesa be run more like a business?


INCREASED TENSION
The gathering promised to be just a little tense, but the fact that a brick with a note attached to it was tossed through the door of Mayor Gary Monahan's pub in the early hours of Saturday will certainly add to that tension.

CMTV TO COVER
It's my understanding that Dane Bora and Brad Long of CMTV will be present to tape the event for future viewing.






BIG TIME ATTENTION
Adding to the fun of this week is the fact that New Yorker Magazine writer Tad Friend will be in town to attend the forum, the council meeting on Tuesday and interview several individuals as he gathers information for a future article about Costa Mesa.