UPDATE: as one of our commenters pointed out, you can click on the billing fragment, below to get the picture of what happened for the month of July 2009. Enjoy, but try not to retch.
August 17th, 2009 was a great day to be Matthew Cunningham. See, the Red County Blog editor and pretended conservative pulled down $1680 wordsmith pimping for the liberal welfare state via his lucrative deal with the OC Children and Families Commission.
Why this Commission, that was created to help little children, is dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars each year into opinion swaying of dubious value is exasperating. The fact that this money is going into the coffers of well-connected repuglicans also gives off quite an aroma – influence peddling-wise.
How and why these contracts are awarded is certainly a topic that should be addressed by the Commission and their Executive Director Michael Ruane, as well as by the Board of Supervisors, who appoint Commission members.
One thing is crystal clear. This Commission is more interested in PR and lobbying for their revenue than they are actually accomplishing anything.
Here is the billing statement for that day that put a happy face on all the Cunninghams in Suite C. Who knew that revising vanilla versions of op-eds could be so rewarding?
Maybe Cunningham really does believe in the good works of the Commission, although I’ve got to wonder what other tax and spend schemes he will be promoting next.
Yup. The time of the year when this little-known, virtually opaque level of government that was created by Rob Reiner’s tobacco tax hands out its PR and lobbying contracts to well-connected “small government” types like blabbermouth Matthew J. Cunningham and Anaheim’s Mayor for Hire, Curt Pringle.
The hell with the kids. It's our turn at the trough!
I have previously documented the big government gravy being slurped up by Pringle and Cunningham here, and here. Were talking really big bucks here, Friends, and you get the feeling that not only is this Commission in existence to dole out the government largess to local repuglicans, but that its proprietors are a lot more interested in smiley face public relations and protecting their flow of tax revenue from Sacramento than they are in helping any kids. See, it takes a village to raise those children but unfortunately the bureaucracy and its spokesholes don’t come cheap.
Anyway, May and June are the months these contracts seem to come due and also seem to keep getting rolled over with almost no public scrutiny, or really any sort of performance audit for that matter. You can bet the family farm we’ll be reporting on the attempts to renew these contracts in the future.
A creator of jobs. Sidhu, are you paying attention?
While many County departments have to endure furloughs and layoffs big spender of our dough Tom Daly seems to be going in the opposite direction. I learned that he has just recently showed off his newly minted Executive Aide – Bruce Matthias, to his staff.
This new hire has to be costing tax payers a bundle. But most disturbing is that Matthias was recently released by the County’s Executive Office from his job as head of the County’s legislative affairs unit – a sort of in-house government lobbyist. Since Daly hired Mr. Matthias as an “at-will-employee,” he didn’t have to go through any sort of competitive hiring process to bring on board someone who was recently cut loose by the County CEO – in other words, pure cronyism. So what does Matthias know about running anything, let alone a Clerk/Recorder’s office? Just looks like typical jobs for the boys featherbedding corruption to me.
Tellingly, this recent addition to Team Daly used to be Chief of Staff to Assemblyman John Lewis during his first three years in office. Hey, wait! Isn’t the John Lewis Machine running Daly’s campaign? Hmm.
Hey, this guy's got a mortgage.
Maybe Daly is returning a favor. Clearly the Matthias family is pals with Daly. Matthias’ wife Sonja Matthias contributed to Daly’s now abandoned campaign for Supervisor 2010. Or maybe Daly’s doing the favor for Lewis. Who knows?
All I know is that it is very depressing although not really surprising to see more and more so-called conservative Republicans finding ways to profit off of County government.
As for Daly, this blatant cronyism in a time of recession is just par for the course. Remember the $48,000 doled out to a political contributor to “study” a sports hall of fame? And the $1700 a month retainer to a Sacramento government consulting business? Or the $2.1 million flushed on the tear-down building on Civic Center?
We could hope that Matthias has been brought on board to end this cycle of Daly disasters, but what particular skill set he brings to solve any of his new bosses managerial shortcomings is unknown.
Wake up Orange County! We need to get rid of this free spending, incompetent career politician and return the Clerk-Recorder’s Office to a professional operation instead of what it has become – an unaccountable sinkhole of waste.
Here’s a link to a Register article by Tony Saavedra that starts out with the breathtaking news that the OC Cemetery Board voted to hold a meeting to talk about raising it’s stipend 5%. That’s 5% of $100 per meeting, or a whopping five bucks per member. If they meet once a month that would total a mammoth $300 per year. Thanks for that earth-shattering news, Tony.
In the meantime, not a squeak about this opaque public district paying Anaheim mayor and general fixer/influence peddler Curt Pringle $6000 per month to locate a new graveyard site for the boneyard boys that we reported about here; a task that could have been handled by a realtor for the price of a commission paid by the seller. Of course Pringle was also supposed to grease the skids – which seems to be his only marketable job skill. No word yet on whether he accomplished anything at all, although this seems not to be a requirement to get a lucrative contract with one of these little known but apparently well-heeled public agencies.
Pringle's cup runneth over.
But Saavedra seems to think his readers are more interested in the $5 per month scandal that’s he’s trying to brew up into something potable. Sadness.
And by the way, here’s a choice nugget from The Register’s OC Watch Dog, Teri Sforza, inviting whistleblowing news tips that I recently stumbled across. Maybe the Register reporters should (re)read Ms. Sforza’s stirring words. Here’s the kicker: “…we’ll put together a blogroll of local muckrakers like ourselves.”
The other day I described how Republican Mayor Curt Pringle made some big bucks as a lobbyist for the so-called Children and Families Commission, a by-product of the 1998 liberal feel-good Proposition 10 that placed a new tax on tobacco and redistributed the dough to the Government Kiddie Bureaucracy. I promised to shake the branches of this tree to see what other strange fruits might tumble out. Well, Lo and Behold.
Matthew "it takes a village to raise a child" Cunningham
It turns out that Matthew J. Cunningham who masquerades as a local “conservative” blogger may be the biggest big government gravy slurpers at the Children and Families Commission trough.
As he pontificates about the joys of small government on his blog, Cunningham is making a killing as a PR flack for the ultra-liberal Commission and it’s professional do-gooders. And why not? His buddies Bill Campbell and Hugh Hewitt are/were on the Commission when he started his lucrative shill-meistering and wordsmithery for a government bureaucracy, and it’s hard to conceive that his uberboss, John Lewis wasn’t somehow responsible for directing this huge windfall to its rather unlikely recipient.
Here are the fun facts of the Cunningham contracts with the Commission:
Contract 230 July 6, 2005 $ 25,000
Contract 227 May 2 2007 $100,000
Contract 227A May 7, 2008 $195,000
Contract 264 June 3, 2009 $185,000
Hey you poor hungry kids out there: that’s almost half a million bucks in just three years to a guy who couldn’t even proof read his own website! And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of dollars dished out to Pringle and the White House Writers Group.
And if you look at the Exibit B scope of work attachments you’ll come away hard pressed to see how the scope of work amounts to more than a handful of hours a week, flack-wise. No wonder Intrepid Boy Journalist has so much spare time for his blogging and political punditry.
The biggest challenge for Cunningham appears to be to get conservatives to buy the spin on all this hogwash. And naturally a lot of his “scope” is the usual nebulous “assist the staff” bullshit. Of course we can only wonder at the selection and bidding process at work here.
It’s perfectly clear to me that this opaque and over-funded commission needs complete outside scrutiny with fiscal and performance audits. Maybe Cunningham’s pals at the Grand Jury might want to delve into the doings of this public agency.
And the next time Matthew Cunningham preaches at you that you must believe in the joys of small government and lower taxes, or when he suggests whole village child rearing is Obama socialism, just give him a wink and a nod and try not to stare too hard at the giant scarlet H on his forehead.
Your friendly and well-paid guide to the next life.
Okay. We know there’s a lot of money in lobbying. That’s why lobbyists contribute so much to political campaigns – to influence legislation and win government contracts for their clients.
But who knew there was so much taxpayer gravy to be slurped up in and around opaque local government districts? The other day we looked at Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle’s massive windfall lobbying for the little-known OC Children and Families Commission, here. But Pringle has not only scored big bucks lobbying for the Heathy Kids Bureaucracy, he’s also made some serious green lobbying for the dead!
Yep. That’s right. In 2008 Pringle was awarded a $6000 per month annual contract to find new burial grounds for something called “The OC Cemetery District” and to do some sort of educational outreach to the community. He was also supposed to be some sort of “consultant” on developing the existing Lake Forest bone yard. You read right. $6000 per month is $72,000 per year. With a $25,000 bonus if he actually managed to accomplish something.
According to the General Manager of the Cemetery District, Tim Deutsch, the contract was extended to cover the balance of fiscal year 2009-2010, so presumably Pringle failed to deliver in year one, and was naturally rewarded with a contract extension.
The lobbyists are dying to get in...
So we have several problems as far as I can see: one is a pretty vague contract with completely disparate elements, awarded without any sort of competition; and then there’s the amount – what seems to be an exorbitant sum of money with no guarantees of actually accomplishing anything; and finally, there seems to be a lack of any sort of quality control or financial oversight in the management of this District.
Pringle got $6000 a month and all I got was this lousy mug...
It’s pretty obvious that the District has more money than it knows what to do with. But the real question is: why didn’t they simply engage a commercial realtor to find them more land – at zero cost? And while we’re contemplating embarrassing questions, what qualifies Pringle’s PR shop as a cemetery planner or a cemetery entitlements developer? Isn’t that what the District pays it’s general manager to do?
And finally, why on Earth does the Cemetery District need anybody to do community outreach? Isn’t that why the phone book has the Yellow Pages?
First wrap yourself in the flag. The rest is easy.
Away back in 1998, the people of California in their infinite wisdom passed Proposition 10, a tax on cigarettes and tobacco products the revenue of which was to go to the creation of a vast new state and local early child development bureaucracy. At the time, and even subsequently Republicans have assailed the tax and its main advocate, Rob “Meathead” Reiner for this statist approach to whole village child-rearing.
What many people don’t realize is how many supposedly conservative Republicans have made small fortunes participating in skimming lucrative contracts of questionable value off of the tax proceeds.
Let’s take a look at how this works in Orange County.
Proposition 10 created Children and Family Commissions in California’s counties, including Orange County. The very name suggests typical liberal social engineering. Replete with staff, lawyers and appointed commissioners the thing is virtually opaque public-wise, and yet it starts the process of allocating millions of dollars of Prop 10 monies as it adopts programs, and more problematically, hires a plethora of consulting services. And what consulting services they are!
Let’s take a look at the OC Child and Family Commission agenda for the June 4, 2008 meeting. One item really jumps out.
$150,000 to Curt Pringle (up from $100,000 the year before) to be a lobbyist! And another $150,00 to “The White House Writers Group,” a collection of former Reagan script writers, to promote the County’s ever-so special programs and projects nationwide!
Say what? Why is a government agency that is supposed to be helping unhealthy poor kids making healthy, rich Republican adults even richer? Why do they need a lobbyist? They say it’s to protect their bureaucracy from budget raids. Really? $150,000 to lobby the legislature for a mere twelve months? Yep, that’s $12,500 per month; or, over $600 per working day! And, say, how did that Pringle deal work out for them?
And why do they need to promote themselves and their programs anywhere except inside the County? Good questions. Anyhow, $300,000 per annum could feed a lot of hungry kids; or a mere handful of grownup Repuglicans.
If anybody was wondering what Pringle’s “expertise” is, and how it will be applied to his Main Chance Choo Choo, now you know – lobbying for ever greater tax revenue in Sacramento! What a racket!
I like to help spread the wealth around...
I notice that in 2008 Commission members include the John Lewis-sawdust-brained-marionette Bill Campbell, and ‘Pug talking pin-head Hugh Hewitt – both chums of our old acquaintance, Matthew J. Cunningham – another supposed big government hater.
News flash! Repuglican “consultants” like Curt Pringle not only make their livings helping us regular citizens “navigate” the treacherous waters of the big government they helped create, they also make big incomes for themselves and their underlings by reaping government windfalls – like Prop 10 revenue redistribution.
Well, the original critics of Proposition 10 were right on the money. But now it looks like some of them are in it – but good.
I’m going to be giving the branches of the Children and Families Commission tree a real good shake, and it will be interesting to see what other strange fruits fall out of it.
Today we learned that our old friend has made a request at the County to see our public document requests! It seems Cunningham has requested aCounty-wide search for any document requests made by our own fearless Travis Kiger. Well, turn about is fair play, of course, and we always play fair.
Of course one has to wonder why The Jerb is so interested in finding out what we are looking for, and the curious wouldn’t have to waste a lot of time guessing. He’s obviously working for Tom Daly’s campaign, no doubt through the direction of his boss and political soul mate John Lewis. Still, a County-wide search?
Cunningham will do whatever I tell him. We're very tight.
Those guys seem to be terrified that more crooked skeletons will soon be a tumblin’ out of Tom Daly’s closet, and it looks like maybe it’s Cunningham’s job to run interference and perhaps preemptively wordsmith them away.
And it may also be that Cunningham just wants to see what we’re up to so he can find out if he has any other buddies under our scrutiny. Or maybe he just wants to learn what real, disinterested citizen bloggers do.
In any case we’re flattered to have somebody check out and even publicize what we’re doing. See, unlike Cunningham, we aren’t front men for crooks, influence peddlers, and perjurers. We’re just funny that way.
One of the fun things about public records searches is that you can also see who is doing searches. Now that’s good, clean fun!
We found out that Matthew J. Cunningham of the formerly Red County blog did a public records search on County Clerk candidate and Republican Hugh Nguyen. He asked for Nguyen’s e-mails since the invention of the computer. Well, over two year’s worth, anyway.
Oops! That was going to be pretty expensive since the County would have to hire a contractor to collect the data and then it would have to be reviewed prior to release. The upshot was the County declined to satisfy the request. They did provide Nguyen’s 700 forms (statement of economic interest).
On the other hand a record search of available records turned up a brief and harmless discussion about Daly protegee Renee Ramirez’ very brief County Clerk campaign sent to Nguyen. Wow. Go to work and turn that into an issue, Matthew!
Now first, let’s dispense with the “why” part for the uninitiated. Cunningham claims to be a conservative Republican – he’s been chattering away just like one for years now. And yet his mentor and string puller from way back is John Lewis, a campaign consultant and lobbyist who has been working for Democrat County Clerk Tom Daly behind the scenes since 2002. Daly recently quit the 4th District Supervisors race after a series of embarrassing revelations of waste and mismanagement in his office and has scuttled back to the County Clerk’s race so he can keep wasting money left and right as he protects our vital records.
Snooping on a fellow Republican, and one backed by a good share of the County Republican establishment in order to help a Democrat with an awful fiscal record? Bad boy. Bad, bad, boy!
When I'm done with my sports hall of fame project we'll get right to work on fixing 433 Civic Center West
Cunningham has already made it a point to parrot “untrustworthy” drivel about Nguyen he picked up at the local liberal blog and comically expanded upon; and hasn’t said a peep about any of Daly’s fiscal squanderings. How’s that for conservatism and accountability?
Matt and I are of like mind...
Now for the “how” of the great e-mail hunt. Presumably Cunningham could actually pony up the dough to do opp research on a Republican. Would he?That’s a lot of cash. If he does, it will look extremely suspicious and a reasonable person would have to question the source of the cash.
To wrap up, it’s pretty obvious that the Daly/Lewis/Cunningham team are worried about Nguyen. Daly has challenged Nguyen’s ballot title and a surrogate has actually challenged Nguyen’s use of his first name. Still it’s a County-wide race and Daly has plenty of name ID over the relatively unknown Nguyen.
But maybe they’re right to be worried. Are there more Daly skeletons that are about to tumble out of the closet?
If somebody were teaching a class of young bureaucrats and politicians on the art of how to really screw something up and get a way with it, he might very well use the County of Orange’s acquisition of the building at 433 Civic Center West as textbook material.
Maybe we can...aw, Hell, tear it down.
As we have detailed here, the building was purchased at the beginning of 2008 for $2.1 million by the Board of Supervisors, at the behest of County Clerk, Tom Daly. The ostensible purpose was to accommodate the overflow of paper in the County’s archives, of which Daly is chief custodian.
The job requires no qualifications except getting the most votes.
Somehow, almost inexplicably, the County staff in the then RDMD building and real estate sections claimed to have checked out the building and found it acceptable; the County CEO Tom Mauk recommended to the Supervisors an “as-is” purchase, another inexplicable decision. As later events revealed, the County staff’s involvement in this acquisition was utterly disastrous and placed the Board in what has become an acutely embarrassing situation.
So why did the so-called professionals make the determinations they did? There aren’t a lot of choices. They were either lobbied by Daly; or they simply did what they thought Daly wanted them to do; or they are completely incompetent and should be immediately terminated for gross negligence.
Who did what, now?What? Why? How?Good thing the Ackermans never found out.
I also note that the Board of Supervisors are endowed with ample budgets to employ able and competent staff. So what happened to these all these gifted people? Chris Norby, John Moorlach, and Janet Nguyen each voted for this. Where were their personal staff members? Was there not one competent person among all these well-paid supervisorial aides who could have raised a red-flag? How come not one of the Supervisor’s aides walked a couple hundred yards to examine a decrepit building that staff was recommending purchase, as-is? And why didn’t an “as-is” purchase raise a serious red flag to the Supervisors themselves, all three of whom purport themselves to be fiscal conservatives? Would any three of these folks buy property with their own money “as-is?”
And how come none of these same Supervisors argued for an examination of alternatives to acquiring real estate to house the paper overflow?
Or was “rubber stamping” simply the modus vivendi of these Superviors and their direct employees? I think we have to assume that the same narrow possibilities that apply to the bureaucrats above, also apply to the Supervisors and their personal staffs.
Sometime in 2009 the County hired Kishimoto Architects to do a space and physical assessment of 433 Civic Center West. We can only speculate at this point what caused this to occur, but since a competent assessment of a property normally occurs before and not after a property is purchased, I really have to wonder. But the building was acquired “as-is.”
Kishimoto’s assessment was grim. The building failed to meet the County Clerk’s space needs; and it was deficient or obsolete in every conceivable way and can’t be used by the public. It will cost additional millions to make it work; but the original investment appears to be a dead loss, given the scope and cost to fix the building.
Off we go, into the Wild Blue Yonder...
And here’s the rub, accountability-wise. So many people have their fingerprints all over this disaster that it becomes virtually impossible to pin effective culpability on anybody, and hence, accountability. Tom Daly is the prime architect of this fiasco, to be sure; but as his adherents are quick to point out, staff recommended this and the Board approved it.
I didn't do it...
So Daly can shrug and point to the incompetent staff. Staff is always protected as the poor, under-compensated civil servants that they are; and after all they were just following direction, they’ll say. Plus, the lax overseer of the RDMD has slinked off to retirement with a massive, inflation-linked pension.
Bryan Speegle. The door didn't hit him on the way out.
The Supervisors’ aides can shrug it off, too. Daly wanted it, not us; plus, our crack County staff said everything was hunky dory. And besides we were out at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast schmoozing with the locals.
It was Norby's fault. That's why I'm putting all these new people in his office.
And what of the Supervisors themselves, who are responsible to nobody but the voters, and who have so signally failed them? Norby has already moved on, and Moorlach faces no opposition for re-election this fall. Janet Nguyen is the only one who is going to have to answer to the electorate on this issue. She’d better.
