CRA Forum: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
On Saturday Ed Royce and the CRA hosted a forum for Fullerton city council candidates. I’ll spare you the agony of redundant and predictable answers to the not-so-relevant questions on illegal immigration, gun rights and abortion. As expected, all of the candidates stuck to the party line.
So let’s get down to the two major issues where the candidates diverged and that actually affect Fullerton: Public employee pensions and redevelopment abuse. Candidate positions were carefully filtered into the following matrix:
| Pension Reform | |||
| Committed to serious pension reform | No commitment to pension reform | ||
| Redevelopment / Eminent Domain | Rein in redevelopment abuse and eminent domain powers. | Bruce Whitaker Greg Sebourn Barry Levinson |
|
| Use tax dollars to fund developer projects through redevelopment and allow eminent domain for taking private property when “necessary.” | Marty Burbank | Roland Chi Don Bankhead Pat McKinley |
|
The candidates split into two camps, with Don Bankhead leading his team of big-government RINOs who’ve never met a redevelopment boondoggle that they didn’t like. That’s not really surprising, given that Bankhead and McKinley benefit from the current system through enriched government pensions.
On the other end of the spectrum, a few candidates acknowledged Fullerton’s most serious problems and promised to take action and fight taxpayer abuse.
Overall Bruce Whitaker dominated the forum with his calm, well-reasoned responses. Barry Levinson took some good shots at Bankhead, for which he was reprimanded by the moderator but applauded by this blog. Greg Sebourn also targeted the current bureaucracy with facts and figures which caused Bankhead to become visibly aggravated. Roland Chi spoke well but avoided making any strong statements. Marty Burbank and Pat McKinley both wore funny hats and stumbled through their answers. Aaron Gregg was a no-show and Tony Fonte was a colorful guy but it was hard to follow his responses.
Predictable. I would like to see a picture of the funny hats.
Hats, hats, hats………
I want to see those hats, P L E A S E….. ! ! !
The hats were the talk of the forum.
It was ridiculous for those two guys to be wearing hats.
By the way, if McKinley had NOT worn the hat as he was seated next to Bankhead…they would definitely look like twins separated at birth. It gave me the scary image of Bankhead and McKinley at the dais being “buddy buddy” as one would see at a retirement village in Florida.
Please no grumpier OLD men and double dipping running the city of 120,000!
What did Levinson say about Bankhead?
It sucks to be in the red zone. Will these fools try to flip flop their way out of it?
Nah.
I think putting Sebourn in the same camp as Whitaker on reining in redevelopment funds is wrong. Greg Sebourn wants Fullerton to use redevelopment funds to buy foreclosures in your neighborhood and move low income people in to rent with an option to buy. Sebourn needs to be moved into the boondoggle camp. So much for honesty in journalism.
Whitaker and Levinson were the clear winners of the forum. Sebourn didn’t even come close to holding a light to these guys.
And as for the hats? Ridiculous! Nothing was as bad as the Lounge Singer Tony Fonte.
They all didn’t tout the party line on abortion. It sounded like Burbank and McKinley want to use tax dollars to pay for abortions in extreme circumstances.
TheFullertonWatcher: YOU ARE WRONG!
There is nothing wrong with a new approach on redevelopment funds by giving opportunities to many, instead of the mighty few flithy rich bastards who insists on welfare (redevelopment agency) to heed their demands and agendas.
McKinley, Burbank and Bankhead fell flat that the hat was squashed before the forum was over!
I’m not voting for anyone who fails to support pension reform. Thanks for the chart.
Also, where did Tony Fonte end up?
The Lounge Singer and Former Mayor of Buena Park said he’d keep everything the same.
There is when it creates more bureaucracy and what department will now be in charge of the newly purchased rentals? Sounds like another big government waste of money. It’s time to cut government and cut those that want to grow it.
Cut redevelopment agency and allow businesses to build and compete for themselves.
Sebourn switching to anonymous doesn’t make you less wrong.
I see that Marty Burbank got it half right. Fifty percent is still an “F”. Get a clue, man. Redevelopment is nothing but welfare for developers and city employees. Government should be out of this business. They suck at it, and I’m sick of paying for it.
Because we are in the Great Depression II, any politician that shows a viable plan for directly reducing big government’s tax burden on the average person gets the vote. The era of municpal politicians blathering on about issues that may only be decided by the supreme court evaporated with the hard reality that America is broke and not just monetarily.
“Greg Sebourn also targeted the current bureaucracy with facts and figures which caused Bankhead to become visibly aggravated.”
Well, maybe. Or maybe he just realized that they weren’t going to serve frogurt with spinkles, after all.
BTW, how the hell did you get in to that party, Travis?
It pays to have Friends.
Attending the forum, I learned that all of these republicans support fair issuance of CCW permits to the general public.
So why didn’t Bankhead, Jones and Nelson tell our chief to issue CCW’s ahead of Sheriff Hutchens, as allowed by the California law?
Excellent, focused analysis. Love the matrix. Regarding emininent domain, the challenge is that more eminent domain is on its way through many back doors. In addition to economic development takings using the “blight” or Kelo approach, we are in the midst of natural resource development takings in pursuit of shale gas (as in Barnett shale, Marcellus shale, and more).
The pursuit of these gas-rich shales brings with it more pipelines and more underground gas storage fields — and that (pipelines & storage fields) always means eminent domain. And in some states, the gas industry and some legislators are talking up “forced pooling” which will permit gas companies to seize gas under your property, even if you refuse to sign a lease.
Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent Institute for Justice of Kelo fame declines to intervene in energy/utility takings because, they told me, of the “public good” premise. Instead, the Institute should reconsider and offer support in this expanding “market” for eminent domain abuse.
But property owners can fight back. Our two-year battle against Houston-based Spectra Energy which seized our property rights for an underground gas storage field led to the development of a website. If you want to learn from our experience and understand this type of eminent domain, refer to this post: Spectra Energy
Or here: http://www.spectraenergywatch.com/blog/?p=616
Private property rights are so fundamental that founding fathers such as Samuel Adams described it as an “essential” right and wrote, “that no man can justly take the property of another without his consent.”