Uh-Oh! They're Back!

VIEW FROM AFAR
I write to you from a distant venue, barely dealing with issues using dial-up internet service, but still eager to help you stay abreast of important issues in Costa Mesa and environs.

CATCHING YOU OFF-GUARD
As you try to get yourselves sorted out from a summer that included a month of the Orange County Fair - where record crowds took some of the edge off the rancorous rhetoric about who should own that property and how it should be configured - and another month where the Costa Mesa City Council acted like it was running a business in France and basically took the entire month of August off, the council is hoping to catch you in a post-holiday malaise and slip some important stuff past you Tuesday evening.

CONSENT CALENDAR SPENDING
In the Consent Calendar, which is normally voted on as one vote without discussion unless someone decides more discussion is needed on a specific item, there are things of note to consider. First, there are five (5) Warrant resolutions - those items that authorize and recognize the payment of valid expenses. These total almost $4.5 million this time around! And, while the "process" continues to make it difficult to read these things online - you have to cock your head 90 degrees or turn you computer on it's side - the little crick in your neck is worth is. As you scan the entries you'll find one, for example, for Talon Executive Services for almost $14,000 for "legal" services. We think that's the charge for re-investigating the Huy Pham death which resulted in nothing new - he leaped to his death last St. Patrick's Day.

JONES & MAYER
You'll also find that we have paid Jones & Mayer, our outsourced legal group, $115,901.11 for services rendered. We continue to throw money at them at a rate well above the budgeted amount. But wait, the story gets even better.

WE NEEDED "LITIGATORS"
You may recall that one of the reasons we decided to contract with an outside firm in the first place was because, at that time, it was felt that our in-house legal team lacked the litigation experience necessary. So, we hooked up with Jones & Mayer to provide a full-service, one-stop-shop for our legal needs.

JONES DAY
However, way down at the end of the Consent Calendar - items 12 and 13 - we find requests for the council to approve retaining TWO additional law firms to help with our growing legal entanglements. The first, #12, is with the firm of Jones Day to provide legal services in the lawsuit between the city and the "Costa Mesa Employees Association". That's how it is phrased in the item, but I suspect it's supposed to be "Costa Mesa City Employees Association". Ah, those darn details... Anyhow, Jones Day happily proposes a one-time arrangement in which they will be providing services at a rate of $495.00 per hour for any time taken by ANY lawyer (including first year associates) in the firm on our case - plus expenses! And, of course, there is no estimate about the duration or cost of this engagement. Holy cow!

HANSONBRIDGETT "A DEAL"
Item #13, is an arrangement with the San Francisco law firm of HansonBridgett for "legal services in connection with the outsourcing of certain municipal services". This is apparently codifying an already existing relationship, so I find myself wondering if this outfit was one of those who managed to overlook City Council Policy 100-6 for more than 4 months. This firm apparently is a real bargain because they are going to bill us only $325.00 per hour for the primary lawyer and $295.00 for another fellow. And, of course, they're going to bill us for "expenses", too. No photocopy, no phone call, no deep breath drawn on our behalf will go unbilled, as was the case with Jones Day, too.

THE METER KEEPS ON SPINNING
And just what, pray tell, is Jones & Mayer doing in all this? Well, contract City Attorney, Tom Duarte, is "overseeing" all this action and deciding how the city's money will be spent. So, our contract attorney is managing our sub-contract attorney - actually, two of them - and we're still paying them $175.00 per hour for that service. In the meantime, that old meter just keeps spinning.

Further on down in the agenda, under New Business, you'll find some nuggets. Some make sense, others seem just a little strange.

PERS UPDATE
Under #3, the council will receive an update on the PERS retirement system. This should be very interesting. Consultant John Bartels has presented them with an excellent staff report.

OPEN GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL
Next comes Wendy Leece's request to modify the municipal code requiring reporting ALL ex parte communications by council members. While this seems like a good idea - a logical one - I want to hear any arguments against it.


HOMELESS TASK FORCE
Item #5 is an update on the activities of the Homeless Task Force. I'm looking forward to hearing this information, too. They've been working hard and have an aggressive agenda for the remainder of the year.

REALLY?
The next item is a weird one - a resolution to have the CEO place signs on city -owned properties warning about the environmental dangers of amalgam dental fillings... Really?

KOCI NEEDS MONEY
Then radio station KOCI is asking for a grant of $5,655 to purchase and install an Emergency Alert System. They are apparently willing to trade the city more than $6,000 of advertising/programming for this grant. Might be a good deal. I know there has been conversation about some regular interview programming recently.

RFP EVALUATION PROCESS - FINALLY!
Then, under #8, the council will finally consider a process for the evaluation of the Requests for Proposal (RFP) that have been, and are being, issued for the outsourcing scheme. Some will say, "It's about time!" They've been at this for months and now finally will consider a process?!

CONTRACTING COMMITTEE STATUS UPDATE
Item #9 is related to 8 - a Status update on Contracting Committees. This should be very interesting because of the difficulty the city and the bargaining unit had putting these together once Council Policy 100-6 was finally unearthed.

DEPARTMENTAL REORGANIZATION
Then, finally, the Big Elephant on the agenda - the major reorganization of several city departments. This is a whopper! And, based on the earlier agenda, it's very likely that this will be discussed very, very late in the evening. And, as I've stated many times in the past, councils typically don't make good decisions when the clock passes midnight.


TAKE A LOOK AT THESE CHANGES!
1.Information Technology Division becomes a division within the Finance Department;

2.Recreation Division becomes a division within the Public Services Department;

3.Human Resources/Risk Management Division becomes of a division within the CEO Department;

4.A new Communications and Marketing Division to be created within the CEO Department;

5.The Central Services Section becomes a section within the Communications, Marketing and Community Affairs Division of the CEO Department;

6.The Housing and Community Development Division become a Division of the Development Services Department;

7.Eliminate the current vacant positions of Administrative Services Director, Human Resources Administrator - Risk Management, and Budget and Research Officer;

8.Reclassify the following existing positions:
a.Finance Director to Finance and Information Technology Director

b.Human Resources Administrator in Human Resources to Human Resources Manager

c.Human Resources Analyst in Risk Management to Principal Human Resources Analyst in Risk Management; and

9.Create and fund the following new positions:
a.Public Affairs Manager - Communications and Marketing in the CEO Department

b.Public Affairs Manager – Community Affairs and Special Events in the CEO Department

c.Budget Analyst in the Finance Department

d.Executive Secretary (Confidential) - City Council Office to support workload and communications of five City Council members

e.Executive Secretary (Confidential) - the CEO Department to support the workload of the Assistant CEO, Communication & Marketing staff, Community Affairs and Special Events staff, Management Analyst and support for City Attorney’s Office

WOW!
Certainly, we don't disagree with re-organizing to make operations more efficient and productive. However, it looks to me like there are going to be some permanent positions created for consultants - the two Public Affairs Managers slots, for example, for Bill Lobdell and Dan Joyce. Lobdell tells me that these positions will be actively recruited... OK, if you say so, Bill.

LATE NIGHT SNEAK ATTACKS
All that happens before council member comments - a time at the end when surprises are sprung on an unsuspecting public. You will recall Eric Bever's question for the staff at the last meeting, when he requested them to investigate how a single council member could be prohibited from placing an item on the agenda - a clear attempt to further marginalize Wendy Leece's presence. You may recall that he might have spilled the beans about possible Brown Act violations when he brought the issue up, indicating that he tried to confirm an interest with "at least one other" council member before placing an item on the agenda.

THIS WEEK'S UP TO YOU
You all are on your own at this council meeting. A little surgical procedure will keep me from attending and, in fact, might prohibit me from even observing on television. So, pay attention... it's your city they are trying to destroy.

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.