Costa Mesa Employees File Complaint (Amended)

CMCEA DEMANDS HALT TO LAYOFFS
The Costa Mesa City Employee's Association (CMCEA) announced through a press release from the Orange County Employee's Association (OCEA) that they have filed a complaint asking a Superior Court Judge to stop the layoff of more than 100 City employees.


HATCH NAMED AS DEFENDANT
City Chief Executive Officer Tom Hatch was also named as a defendant. The complaint asks for a temporary restraining order and long term injunctive relief. The full text of the press release is below.

STILL AWAITING REPLY TO CALAWARE LETTER
In a related issue, we are still awaiting the response from City Attorney Tom Duarte on the letter from CalAware General Counsel Terry Francke that opined that the City has been breaking The Brown Act through the use of the 2-person Working Groups. Duarte promised word on that issue today. As I type this there are still a few minutes left in the work day at City Hall.


NOTE: Late Monday afternoon, after the close of business, the following statement was sent to me by Interim Communication Director, Bill Lobdell, as the City's official statement on this matter: "The City Attorney's Office has not seen the complaint. Once the attorneys can review it the city will have a response."

And when they do I'll post it for you to consider.

CMCEA PRESS RELEASE

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact:
JenniferMuir:714-835-3355
jmuir@oceamember.org


May 16, 2011

Costa Mesa employees seek court intervention
to stop layoffs

Attorneys for the Costa Mesa City Employees Association today filed a complaint against the City of Costa Mesa asking a Superior Court judge to stop the layoff of more than 100 City employees.

The complaint, which includes a request for an immediate temporary restraining order to stop the layoffs and long term injunctive relief, also names Costa Mesa Chief Executive Officer Thomas Hatch as a defendant.

According to the complaint, the City's action to lay off City employees and outsource their jobs is prohibited under both California law an d the agreement between the City and the City Employees' Association.

California law prohibits general law cities like Costa Mesa from outsourcing services except under very narrow circumstances. The City's action to outsource nearly all city services (except Police) exceeds the powers granted to municipalities and clearly violates California law.

Additionally, the City's contract with the Employees' Association prohibits this type of mass outsourcing during the term of the agreement, which doesn't expire until March 31, 2013.

"As we have said since the very beginning, the City did not have the legal authority to take this action," said Nick Berardino, General Manager of the Orange County Employees Association. "The Council majority has had a series of opportunities to avoid litigation, but they ignored repeated public and private warnings and instead irresponsibly chose to send layoff notices unlawfully to nearly half of the City's workers."

Please contact Jennifer Muir for a full copy of the complaint.

Brown Act, Homeless & Hatch (Amended)

YOU CAN SWALLOW NOW
I guess I gave you plenty to chew on over the weekend with my last post. There's never a dull moment here in the land of the Newport-Mesa.





IN ANTICIPATION OF...
Today, Monday the 16th, is the day Costa Mesa City Attorney Tom Duarte promises us a reply to the Brown Act letter sent by General Counsel Terry Francke of Californians Aware (CalAware) last week on the subject of the so-called Working Groups - two council members meeting privately to discuss important issues that affect all residents. Of main concern is the budget group composed of Mayor Gary Monahan and Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer that has met at least a dozen times since being formed in January to discuss the budget and outsourcing. We wrote about the letter last week, HERE and HERE.

...A NEGATIVE RESPONSE
If Duarte is consistent he will, once again, tell us that the committees are "ad hoc", and as a result are NOT subject to the transparency considerations prescribed in The Brown Act. That's what he told me twice a month ago when I brought the subject up and provided an opinion by the California Attorney General to the contrary.

NOTE: Late Monday afternoon Costa Mesa City Attorney Tom Duarte did issue a formal response to Terry Francke. You can read it HERE. As predicted, the answer was the same one he gave, twice, more than a month ago.

HOMELESS TASK FORCE MEETS WEDNESDAY
This Wednesday, May 18th, the Costa Mesa Homeless Task Force will meet again, this time in Conference Room 1A at City Hall beginning at 5:30. According to the agenda, among those things to be discussed will be 1) Susan Sassone, Head Librarian will discuss the impact of the homeless on the Library at Lions Park and what is being done to address the issue and 2) Larry Weichman, Chairman of the Costa Mesa Chamber of Commerce and UberRealtor here in town will discuss the impact of homeless on businesses.

HATCH TO SPEAK AT MESA VERDE COMMUNITY MEETING
Our friends at Mesa Verde Community, Inc., the homeowners association for that part of town, has asked me to mention that a week from Wednesday, May 25th, they will hold their General Meeting and the Keynote Speaker that evening will be Costa Mesa Chief Executive Officer, Tom Hatch. This meeting is open to the public and the sponsors are very excited about having Hatch give them his views on the state of the city at this time. Details can be found on page 2 of their April newsletter, HERE.

COMMENTS STILL NOT FULLY RESTORED
My blog host, Blogger, has been working feverishly throughout the weekend to restore all the blog posts that were dropped last Wednesday due to their maintenance screw-up. We're still awaiting the restoration of the comments that were appended to many of those blog entries. We are told that they should be back online available for viewing "soon", whatever that means. Thanks for your patience...