February 2010

Mission Viejo Mum on Baugh - Union Wins, Accountability Lost...Sort of

Posted By CotoBlogzz 02-04-2010 7:A0 PM

Mission Viejo, CA - If every politician in the nation was asked to pay the country, one devalued buck to pay off the national debt, every time he or she used the evil twins accountability & transparency or the name Scott Brown, you can be assured than China would not be the defacto economic superpower.

Candidate Obama liked to said that “words must mean something”. There is a significant difference between the candidates promises and the president’s actions leading us to conclude that now the president things that “words don’’t mean jack.” Accountability is not simply saying “the buck stops here”, but being answerable and righting the wrong, as illustrated below.

Accountability’s evil twin is transparency. A Washington smoke-filled backroom where the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback and the Union Bribe deals are made, is not a transparent entity. In general, when we have asked substantive questions of the OCSD, what we have gotten for the most part is obfuscation or what we like to called Purely Recycled Answers (PRA)

So we want to see if Orange County City Hall was accountable and transparent, for starters – that is, is City Hall ready to answer questions from Joe the Taxpayer?

Arguably the Mission Viejo recall vote that took place Tuesday, where apparently pro-recall candidate Dale Tyler will not succeed Lance MacLean, raises a number of questions about union influence in local elections. Something like 14,000 registered voters in Mission Viejo signed a petition to place Councilman Lance MacLean up for a recall. In Obamelette Omelette-type of campaign the deputies union has spent some $77,000 against the recall, using mailers in an attempt to scare voters saying something along the lines that if the recall passes it could compromise public safety, library funding, and perhaps quality of life in general as we know it.

We asked Mission Viejo City Hall (Mayor Frank Ury, Mayor Pro Tem Lance MacLean, Cathy Schlicht, Council Member John Paul Ledesma and Council Member Patricia Kelley) two simple questions: How do you deal with the union – select from the models below, or? In the contract you signed with the country, there is zero provisions for accountability. In such case, how can you be sure that the Mission Viejo Taxpayer is getting the best return for his or her public safety buck?

Various models used to deal with public sector organized labor as shown below:

A. The Chief Bratton Model: Go to bat for everything the union bosses want, then leave when the money dries up. Most effective when the leader has a PR machine that can rival his or her bosses. This model was extremely successful in NYC and Los Angeles all due to Chief Bratton. We previously suggested Chief Bratton left a bankrupt Los Angeles, certain skeletons would show up. Indeed, the ink was not dried in Chief Bratton’s exit documents when an audit revealed that the LAPD Botched Millions in Purchases.

B. Then there is what we call the Obamelette Omelette Progressive Model. In this case, the public sector’s organized labor is THE agenda enforced via Andy Stern’s motto of “power of persuasion or persuasion of power”

C.. The more fiscal conservative mode is the The Ronald Raegan Model – Shape up or ship out: “…we cannot compare labor-management relations in the private sector with government” in other words, organized labor in the public sector should be obsolete in the 21^st century.

D. And recently we saw a unique working relationship between Scott Brown, an elected official and organized labor, where rank and file is more in line with the elected official than the union bosses:The Brown Model: A hybrid where the union bosses are taken out of the picture and instead deal directly with rank and file to take care of he taxpayers agenda.

E. We view the Baugh Initiative, as a hybrid. Which model do you think works best for Mission Viejo?

So far, Mission Viejo City Hall is being more like the Washington smoke-filled backroom than a transparent local governance that does not wish to be accountable to Joe the Taxpayer. And look what happened? The union gets a deal in Mission Viejo with the recall and you can bet than any other local politician who may want to challenge the union may be thinking twice just about now. So, how about more accountability and transparency?