The No Account County
One of the things we here at FFFF stand for is the idea of government accountability.
So naturally we were pretty sore when we saw the memo from County CEO Tom Mauk to the Board of Supervisors downplaying the disastrous purchase of the money pit at 433 W. Civic Center Dr. here.
Mauk finally produced the smoking gun—three years too late—an RDMD analysis estimating the needed cost to make the building functional. The amounts reached into the millions but for some reason this critical information, which was known to staff in June 2007, was withheld from the Board. Any guesses as to why?
View the memoEvidently Mr. Mauk is not interested in accountability. But we are, so please take note of the names of the people in the County Clerks office and the RDMD who were copied on this June 2007 memo. They are:
Phil Brigandi, Paul Lanning, Jean Pasco, Bob Wilson, Clark Shen, Mark Browning, Tony Ferrulli, Tony Mason, Michael Stein.
See any familiar names ? Jean Pasco in particular stands out since she was the clerk employee who acted as liaison with the Board in the matter of the building at 433 W. Civic.
This is not the story of an inadvertent error; no this was a deliberate attempt to mislead the Board of Supervisors and the evidence lies in the statements contained in the staff reports that deliberately mischaracterized the condition of the building and that were in fact untrue.
Hopefully the Board of Supervisors will be more interested in finding out what really happened and why crucial information that staff had been aware of for many months was intentionally withheld from them.
I am impressed, but not surprised, by the thorough review done by the RDMD staff. I figured they would have had to have known about the existing conditions and would have reported on it, which it is clear they did do.
As has become typical lately, the workers did their job but management failed. The agenda should have included that report which it did not. That responsibility, as I understand it, fell squarely on Ms. Pasco’s shoulders. However, why didn’t we hear anyone else at the meeting say that there were missing documents? Why didn’t Daly stand up and say that it was a good location but the County would have to invest further to utilize the property? Why? Apparently because the aforementioned Daly and Pasco are incredulous and deceitful opportunists. Or perhaps they were too deep into their own mess to stop and clean it up by the time the deal made it to the Board.
Whatever the reason, Daly is out!
You’d think Pasco, who was once the lead LA Times correspondent for Orange County, might have seen this coming. But I guess not.
I wonder if there is any relationship between this RDMD evaluation of the project, which was apparently pretty thorough, and the purge of RMD’s Director and Assistant Director not too long thereafter. Smacks of the messengers being killed.
Wait a minute! Isn’t Pasco the director of the Archives? How does this qualify her to buy buildings or make recommendations about purchasing buildings? What kind of a scam is Tommy boy running out there? Tommy, you should let the big boys make the big decisions. You are out of your league even for such a lowly position as the clerk-recorder. Let the grown-ups make these decisions please. Please do us a favor and retire or step down and lead. After all you did quit the sup race. No one likes a quitter!
Not surprised that this comes out of Daly’s department, based on the other deceitful things you have pointed out. But didn’t anyone suspect that there would be significant future costs when you buy a dilapidated “office” building but you plan to use it as “public display” facility? That is a no brainer with a very old building that is essentially a collection of very small individual offices. Its also a no brainer that it will cost a lot more than a few million dollars to rehab.