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January 12, 2012January 12, 2012I Aint a Swallerin That

Another Round of Anti-Recall Fabrications

After discovering that Fullerton was not biting on their “Bushala Buying Fullerton” fairy tale, the Anti-Recall committee moved on to their pathetic and even hysterical Plan B: maybe Fullerton will believe that both Tony and Chris Thompson were hooked up several times by the Fullerton PD, hauled and away and placed under investigation by the Orange County DA?

Since this story can be factually disproven, they might want to consider going back to their buying Fullerton strategy.

This week, Larry Bennett attached his name to this mailer which can be seen (here) and additionally attached it as a file to an email blast which can be seen (here).

This monolithic mailer must have cost a bundle to send out. Along with a giant pair of handcuffs and the header of “Busted”, it includes three more postage paid opportunities for voters to tell Bankhead, Jones and McKinley what horrific leaders they have actually been.

The Fullerton Recall has had an uninterrupted and remarkably cooperative relationship with now Interim Chief Dan Hughes and the Fullerton PD with regard to our signature gathering activities at retail locations. It is informally understood between our campaign and the FPD that they WILL NOT arrest our people for signature gathering activities. But in California it is legally incumbent upon any police officer to assist any citizen in executing a citizen’s arrest if the accuser claims to witness a crime.

The bottom line is that signature gathering in front of multi-tenant retail centers s is protected by the First Amendment and legal precedent.

But a number of times, supermarket managers upset by the unwillingness of the Fullerton PD to agree that a crime is occurring, have chosen to file a citizens arrest. The process takes 3 minutes. The police take your name, fill out some paperwork describing the citizen’s accusation, issue a “release” to the signature gatherer and submit a copy of the accusation to the DA to review. Chief Hughes has confirmed that in every case, the DA has quickly and formally disregarded the accusations for lack of evidence.

There are NO pending cases against Tony, myself or any of our signature gatherers. Note that we continue to gather signatures during the “arrests” and after the police leave.

Most notable with all of this continues to be the absolute unwillingness of the anti-recall campaign to address or debate the real issues of the recall:

An absence of management over out-of-control Fullerton cops.
The theft of $27 million of taxpayer’s money with an illegal franchise tax.
The planned doubling of our exorbitant water rates.
A multi-million dollar annual city budget deficit.
Bankhead and Jones’ effort to secretly and retroactively spike the pensions of their buddies who run city hall.
Putting every Fullerton voter $1,700 in debt with a $124 million unfunded city employee pension liability.
Absconding with $10 million per year of revenue for schools and public safety through an illegal and massive expansion of the corporate welfare known as Redevelopment.

December 17, 2011December 18, 2011Fringie Awards

The Fringies® Continue. Worst Vote 2011

by Jan Florys Dog88 Comments

Another popular Fringie® category, Worst Vote, once again had the Nominating Committee sifting through reams of material trying to separate the ridiculous from the sublimely ridiculous. The effort was herculean, and by herculean I mean mind-numbingly depressing. And so the Committee, exhausted and babbling, climbed into a dune buggy and drove off into the cold desert night with nothing but twelve bottles of Thunderbird® and soda crackers.

Anyway here’s what they left behind.

1. In November the Fullerton City Council really distinguished itself, buying 200 special raincoats to keep their police force dry, even though the force only consists of 140 cops, only a few of which would ever be on duty in the rain. They spent $17,000 on that outlay, almost $90 per, but hey, sometime you’ve got to say that money is no object. The vote was 5-0.

2. In July the Fullerton School Board voted 4-1 to hire a huckster named Rudy Ruetigger to be their management retreat’s motivation speaker at $2000, a real bargain. Maybe the bargain basement price was due to the fact that the SEC was nipping at Rudy’s heels. None of the Trustees who supported this extravagance seems to have been the least bit curious about why six-figure salaries plus benefits wasn’t ample motivation for Fullerton’s educrat class.

Pat-McKinley-Cops-300x206 — Me 'n my aliens are about to stomp you.

3. In December the Three Hollow Logs on the Fullerton City Council elected one of their own, Pat McKinley, to be the back up face of Fullerton as Mayor Pro Tem. Well this is perfectly appropriate. McKinley, who makes $20,000 each and every month as a retired public employee is a poster child for runaway pension abuse in California; his insulting and ignorant comments about Kelly Thomas’ injuries, and his jaw-droppingly embarrassing views on sexual battery perpetrated by his policeman make him a perfect symbol of an entrenched, sclerotic, gerontocracy.

4. In August, as the pressure of world-wide scrutiny mounted, the City Council voted 4-1 to hire an outside contractor named Michael Gennaco to avoid doing needed to done: an immediate house cleaning. More wasted dough. An accompanying action was to create a task force on homeless issues, chaired by Rusty Kennedy, friend of cops throughout OC. The creation of this committee was the rudest diversion of all, suggesting that the real issue wasn’t an out-of-control gang of thugs, pickpockets, perjurers, and killers roaming the streets of Fullerton in police uniforms.

tricky dick — Heh, heh. Nobody laid a glove on me!

5. Also in August the Three Hollow Logs needed to prove they still had potent f-up mojo and awarded a multi-million dollar subsidized housing project to the clients of the guy who would become the Recall defense team leader, Dick Ackerman. Ackerman’s client St. Anton Partners who is slated to get millions of public money jumped all the way from eighth place into the driver’s seat. The Age of Miracles is not over!

6. Back in March the Three Tree Stumps voted to try to hide Redevelopment assets from the State, because, let’s face it, these so-called conservatives are hooked on government central planned boondoggles like a junkie is on black tar heroin.

7. The Fullerton School Board granted furlough days to their teachers instead of a comparatively small pay cut. Trustee and union jock strap Janny Meyer opined on face book, and we were there to share her illiterate boo-hooing.

Felz_Joe_2011_sml — Not ready for prime time...

8. Away back in April the City Council gave “acting” City Manager Joe Felz the permanent job without ever having engaged in a search. Three months later Felz would wilt like an old leaf of lettuce in the sun. Joe probably figured the job would be a breeze. After all his predecessors Chis Meyer and Jim Armstrong got away with murder (figuratively). His police force wasn’t so lucky (literally).

Well, Friends, them there’s some pretty bad votes. Feel free to share your opinion.

November 16, 2011November 16, 2011"Dick" Ackerman

“Dick” Ackerman Moral Weathervane of the Anti-recall Team. Part 3.

by Joe Sipowicz128 Comments

When you are a moral vacuum like Dick Ackerman, you really don’t stand for much of anything except your own well-being. Public service? Hell, no! It’s all about personal service. Everything else is just platitudes and bull shit.

An indication of Mr. Ackerman’s future career path was clearly established with the creation of a fake charity by his wife that was simply a mechanism to get state legislators (one of whom was Mr. Ackerman) alone on Maui with lobbyists for big corporate interests who actually paid for the whole junket. Ackerman is hilariously quoted as saying how beneficial these get togethers were, as if being lobbied in Sacramento (instead of Hawaii by the same cast of characters) was somehow just so much more darned inefficient. FFFF posted all about the utterly phony Pacific Policy Research Foundation, here.

AcknFlack4-430x500 — I don't even know how I got into the room...

That was just the start of Mr. Ackerman exploiting Mrs. Ackerman for family gain. And it wasn’t enough that The Dickster got the missus on the Metropolitan Water Board where she naturally supported huge water rate increases (true, that bar was already set really, really low).

In the summer of 2009, while The Dick was illegally lobbying the State Legislature in the sordid the OC Fair Swindle, his protege, 72nd District Assemblyman Mike Duvall was caught bragging of nasty sexual accomplishments with a lobbyist; maybe the idea of nasty accomplishments with lobbyists ignited a fire in Dick’s political loins. By the end of September his wife, Linda Ackerwoman was running to replace the disgraced Duvall!

Now people endowed with a normal dose of shame would have simply receded into the background after the man they promoted was busted for moral turpitude. But the Ackermans are not so endowed. Dick’s immediate impulse was to promote the candidacy of the wife, a woman who had, apparently, never even held a job except as a “consultant” raiding her husband’s campaign accounts.

Well, okay. Lot’s of unqualified dimwits run for the Legislature. The real problem was that the Ackermans didn’t even live in the district. The Ackermans live in a top-secret gated community in Irvine! The State Constitution says you have to live in a district a year, but what the Hell, the State Constitution is for losers!

So Dick and Linda cooked up a fake address in the rumpus room of a Fullerton stooge. Well, technically they were carpetbaggers; but since nobody really believed they spent a night living in Fullerton a better word applies: fraud.

Bankhead2 — You mean they never really lived here. I guess I slept through that. Again.

As expected, Mrs. Ackerwoman got the endorsements of the Three Deteriorating Dinosaurs, all the statewide Redevelopment money, and the big corporate interest lobbyists. They ran one of the slimiest campaign anybody could remember. It hardly mattered. The Ackermans still lost to Chris Norby by a whopping 20 points in the Republican Primary. Within a few weeks they had reregistered to vote in the leafy precincts where their Irvine mini-McMansion is located. How’s that for a big F-you, Fullerton?

The point of the story is simple: there is no basement so low that Dick Ackerman & Co. won’t crawl into it in order to pull a string or make a buck. And if you don’t recognize Dick as the moral barometer of the anti-recall campaign, you don’t know Dick.

September 24, 2011Behind Closed Doors

What Did McKinley Know, And When Did He Know It?

by admin295 Comments

McKinley's Crew — Gee, this is getting depressing.

Friends, we just received this e-mail from a gentleman named George Marshall Thompson who asked if we would publish it. Yes, we will, George. ‘Cause that’s how we roll. And thanks for the submission.

Dear FFFF,

We all saw Fullerton councilman, former police chief and architect of the culture of corruption within the FPD, on CNN. After his cavalier and insulting comments about facial injuries he indicated his belief that it was probably just two cops involved in the murder of Kelly Thomas. He also denied seeing the video.

And after the DA charged only Ramos and Cicinelli with crimes, I’m starting to get a picture in my mind. And that picture ain’t pretty.

We can speculate all day about whether or not McKinley saw the video and then lied about it; or simply read the doctored reports; or received “unofficial” briefings from his pals in the department and the FPOA to which his colleagues on the council were not privy. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if something tumbles out of McKinley’s closet when he is deposed by Garo Mardirossian. But something else is disturbing: the fact that McKinley’s ostensible “speculation” about two cops mirrored anonymous troll comments on this site and ultimately neatly corresponded with the DAs charges.

Is it conspiratorialist to suggest that it McKinley himself participated in the plan to hold Ramos and Cicinelli under the bus as a form of damage control for the other four cops, and more importantly from his perspective, for the good of the whole FPD? Maybe, but it sure is weird that McKinley seemed to know what was going to happen six weeks before it did. And McKinley isn’t psychic. He isn’t even very smart.

Throughout this whole affair I’ve picked up the vibe that it was McKinley who was calling the shots for the City of Fullerton as disaster after disaster piled up; that it was he who told Sellers and Praet to try to buy off the dad, and that he was receiving inside information, perhaps not even shared with the City Manager, and certainly not with Whitaker or Quirk.

Maybe someday we’ll know McKinley’s role throughout the so-called “internal investigation” that never even started until Gennaco was hired. In the meantime one thing remains crystal clear to me. It was McKinley’s total lack of oversight of his own police department that led to the horror show that’s been unfolding the past few months, and that keeps unfolding as more and more Fullerton cops are busted for one crime or another.

The reputation of the Fullerton Police Department is unreveling before our very eyes. And the people of Fullerton are going to pay dearly for the corruption therein.

G.M. Thompson

September 21, 2011September 21, 2011Dead heads

SHOCKING! DISGUSTING! OUTSIDE AGITATORS STIR UP TROUBLE IN FULLERTON!

by Joe Sipowicz79 Comments

We all know the story. The Old Guard is always squawking about them thar’ outside agitators who come to town with their evil commie agendas about civil rights and other suchlike newfangled eye-d-ers. We’ve already heard it about those protesting for transparency and justice in the brutal beating death of Kelly Thomas at the hands of the Fullerton Police Department.

Hilariously, the Three Blind Dinosaurs – Jones, McKinley and Bankhead – have decided to hire an entire gang of outsiders to defend the indefensible – them. So let’s take a quick look.

Ackerslime2 — Yes. I have a price. And it's remarkably low.

First there’s the mastermind, Dick Ackerman, another Mesozoic castoff who operates a sleazy lobbying scam for the Nossaman law firm, and who was just handed a huge multi-million dollar low-income housing project by his three pals on the council, and who has millions of good reasons to keep these incompetent nitwits on the council. Ackerman is a real paragon of virtue who was busted for illegally lobbying the Legislature, who created a phony charity in order to vacation in Hawaii, and who tried to foist his dimwitted wife as an Assemblywoman on Fullerton by cooking up a fake address in our city; actually Ackerman lived, and still lives behind a guarded gate in Irvine, so of course that makes him a shameless liar.

We just found out that Ackerman is peddling his ass as a expert on how to “manage” angry citizens; oh, you know the sort. The kind who react badly when innocent men are murdered in their streets.

dave-ellis-91 — The metamorphosis into an oxygen breathing creature was slow and painful.

Then there’s Dick’s hand-picked mud-slinging associate – a despicable toad named Dave Ellis. Rather than delve into this miscreant’s high crimes and misdemeanors we’ll just let Orange Juice Blogmeister Vern Nelson have at him in a brilliant expose. This creep is from Newport Beach.

Now, perhaps, the funniest bit of all – the anti-recall address: 603 E. Alton Ave. Ste. H . Santa Ana, CA! Santa Freaking Ana?! I guess they couldn’t find a convenient PO box in Fullerton.

It’s true that the superannuated drain clogs have engaged the services of a couple of local stooges to give the appearance of grassroots support, but really, outside of a few shopworn drunks at the boozy Chamber of Commerce mixers, who will support the Tumescent Trio?

One of the boosters is a rather loathsome reptile named James Alexander, known in Fullerton City Hall as a small-time influence peddler and bag man for big developers. This guy is a main chance sort of lizard, and his chances are dwindling rapidly.

Then there’s some other guy named Larry Bennett, who not only backs the Dinosaurs with a weird myopia, but also defends the police union in its role in creating the Culture of Corruption in the FPD. I suppose he has to. His boys and the FPOA are inextricably joined at their collective hips, it would seem. And that’s why there’s a recall in the first place. I am also informed that Bennett sells life insurance to all these geezers, so the myopia is explained actuarially, and the circle conveniently closes.

As the recall signature gathering draws to a successful conclusion we will discover how much (and how little) support the Three Blind Dinosaurs actually have in Fullerton itself.

September 16, 2011September 16, 2011Dead heads

The Monumental Misrule of Don Bankhead

by The Desert Rat76 Comments

Yes it’s been a long, long time. When he first climbed the steps to his throne and surveyed his Fullerton domain the year was 1988. Ronald Reagan was president.

Don Bankhead has been on the Fullerton City Council for 23 years. With a few weeks off for bad behavior – an unnecessary Utility Tax and subsequent recall in 1994 – this monument to sub-mediocrity has been demonstrating his dubious mental faculties every other Tuesday night since dirt was young.

I will always fondly remember when Dick Ackerman referred to him as Don Blankhead. Now how many times did Don hear that as his fellow Fullerton cops chuckled at the dunderhead behind his back?

So now let’s take a moment or two to review Mr. Bankhead’s singularly inept career in Fullerton.

Back in 1988 Bankhead tried to get the job of Fullerton Chief of Police. He failed when the council chose somebody else. Ironically, Dick Ackerman who was on the Council then, was well aware of Blankhead’s utter incompetence. And so, out of spite, he ran for the city council: Lo and Behold he won! On the city council he believed that no one would would laugh at him anymore. And he believed people would laugh with him instead of at him. He was wrong.

Bankhead also suddenly revealed what he never told anybody when he interviewed for the Chief job, or even when he ran for County Sheriff in 1990: that he was a virtual cripple from a series of earlier alleged mishaps that, if true, would have made Inspector Clouseau look like an Olympic gymnast. His scam made the news, but the nice people in Fullerton were too polite to say anything. But we all knew.

Throughout the 1990s, Bankhead supported every single Redevelopment subsidy, boondoggle and giveaway of public money to fly-by-night developers; here is my pithy summation.

In the past ten years he has smiled that dim, senile smile as he turned downtown Fullerton into a booze-soaked battle field that costs the taxpayers of Fullerton $1.5 million every single year, all to the benefit his cynical and parasitical “supporters.” He had the effrontery to claim that without his interventionist Redevelopment Fullerton itself would be a ghost town! He tried to lie his way out of that idiocy. It didn’t work.

or to put it another way:

A darling of the cop union he voted for the bank-breaking 3@50 pension formula that has created a massive and permanent unfunded liability for the taxpayers of Fullerton; he continuously voted for the illegal 10% utility tax on the water ratepayers of Fullerton, money that has gone to pay his own bloated pension.

Of course Bankhead was propped up every step of the way by his “public safety” union allies for whom he performed such acts of generosity with our money.

What Bankhead doesn’t want anyone to know is that in the course of his political career he has pulled down hundreds of thousands of dollars snoozing through footling meetings of various agencies and commissions about which he knows absolutely nothing – but for which he applied the same rubber stamp he has wielded so disastrously in Fullerton.

Although Bankhead is a Republican, and supposed to be some sort of conservative, the inescapable fact is that he is big-government in a big way. And if big-government could help him or his developer buddies score big, so much the better. After all who was really watching? FFFF, that’s who. Here we busted Bankhead for blowing $1200 staying at a four star Long Beach Hotel, on our dime – a mere 25 miles from his house in Fullerton!

This year, finally, the extent to which Bankhead has aided and abetted an incompetent and criminal police department has finally surfaced, and the extent of the damage this simpleton has caused Fullerton has become crystal clear.

Will Bankhead become the first man in California history to be recalled from the same office? Let’s work for it!

Don Bankhead, this is your life: a sad, belabored death march of cognitive meltdown, incompetence, lackeydom, and buffoonery. Fortunately your quarter century misrule is coming to a merciful conclusion. Fullerton is finally waking up and finally deciding that it wants real leaders – not clownish cartoons – on its city council.

August 28, 2011August 29, 2011Behind Closed Doors

Corruption. Bent As A Dog’s Hind Leg: The Tricky Dick Ackerman Legacy

by Grover Cleveland131 Comments

We’ve got it on really good authority that former city councilman, State legislator, and current Irvine resident, Dick Ackerman is going to be heading up the anti-recall effort for Fullerton’s Three Blind Mice: Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley. For those of you who don’t recall the name Ackerman, run through our FFFF archives to discover what sort of moral fiber that this individual is composed of. We busted The Dickster cooking up a fake address in 2009 for his incompetent wife to run in our Assembly district although they actually live in Irvine (note: the Mrs was endorsed by Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley). We caught the old lady operating a fake charity for lobbyists so she and Dick could get free trips to Maui. We also cheered when the Voice of OC finally uncovered the smoking gun that tied Ackerman to illegal lobbying on behalf of the crooked OC Fair Board as we had been reporting all along.

Only a few days ago we shared a notice for an upcoming country club event in which Ackerman will hold forth on how to manage a lynch-type mob.

BossHogg — That boy's gonna be real good to me...soon!

Well, now you know the sort of character we’re dealing with here. But what you might not know is that Dick Ackerman, who works for The Nossaman law firm was recently gifted with a huge windfall by his old pals Jones, Bankhead, and McKinley. See, on August 16th The Three Blind Mice ignored their own professional staff’s recommendation, and instead presented Nossaman’s client, St. Anton Partners a multi-million dollar subsidy on a 60 units per acre low income housing project on Santa Fe Avenue! No wonder Dicky Boy was hanging out at the Council meeting all night and had to endure outraged citizens attacking the incompetence and stoogery of his three puppets on the council for three long hours.

Just for added fun here’s Ackerman’s blurb from the Nossaman website:

He assists companies, individuals, groups, and public agencies in their interactions with governments at the local, county, state, and federal levels. In addition, Mr. Ackerman assists clients in dealing with government and special districts on how to get through the political process.

In layman’s parlance, Ackerman is a political fixer, an influence peddler, and a lobbyist. Just the sort of guy who would spring to the defense of his trio of myopic rodent pals on the Fullerton City Council.

Here’s the page from the staff report listing the scores of the various “developers” seeking official City endorsement that will pave the way for millions in taxpayer subsidies. Check out Ackerman’s crew, St. Anton. Eighth freakin’ place! And yet Jones, Bankhead and McKinley decided to award millions to the guy who will be running their recall campaign. Stink? Much?

The second most ironic thing about this sad but illuminating story is that when he was on the city council in the 1980s, Ackerman was the most steadfast opponent of publicly subsidized housing in Fullerton. Well, that was then and this is now. See, when you’re a ‘puglican and money’s at stake, principles go right down the toilet. The most ironic thing is that in 1994 Ackerman also championed the cause of three incompetent buffoons who were being recalled. He lost that one, too.

As a thoughtful commenter reminds us, below, McKinley, Bankhead, and Jones were so eager to accomodate their pal Ackerman that they pushed through a vote and then had to rescind it because they never held a public hearing. Another example of Three Blind Stooge FAIL.

August 17, 2011August 17, 2011Behind Closed Doors

How To Manage A Lynch-type Mob

by Joe Sipowicz149 Comments

The Orange County Association of Cities is an organization of repuglicans who just can’t stand the thought of big, authoritarian government unless they are milking it for all it’s worth. So it is fitting indeed that this operation should employ former Fullerton City Councilman and State legislator, Dick Ackerman, to teach its members how to “manage” a lynch-type mob (us). Such management presumably means deception, flattery, cajoling, bamboozlement, and ultimately doing nothing.

The choice of Ackerman cannot have been accidental, for he is one of the biggest enemies of government transparency in the State. You may remember some of our posts on Dickie Boy. We busted him cooking up a fake address in Fullerton so his old lady could carpetbag her way into the Assembly and perpetuate Dick’s cozy relationship with big lobbyists. Speaking of lobbyists we also uncovered the Ackermans’ scam non-profit, a gig run by lobbyists to pay for Hawaiian vacations for Dick and his slimy pals in the Legislature. And then of course there was the OC Fair scandal in which Ackerman illegally lobbied his former colleagues in Sacramento. Ackerman’s own billings did him in when exposed by our friends at the Voice of OC(EA). (Parenthetically, the latter incident was the subject of a DA whitewash – hmm).

Ironically, Ackerman has been on of the biggest supporters and promoters of the immensely incompetent and arrogant Three Blind Mice, who presumably, can be relied upon to trek down to the Tustin Ranch Golf Club and hobnob with their repuglican kinfolk and learn from the Dickster all about “shocking crises and what went wrong.”

Come to think about it, maybe Bankhead, Jones, and McKinley should be teaching this course; that is, if they are capable of learning anything at all.

August 15, 2011August 20, 2011Behind Closed Doors

The Double Standard

by Mr. Peabody127 Comments

police-brutality-fairey — A public service announcement...

We all know there’s laws for us and there’s laws for cops. The sort of stuff Fullerton Police Department members have been busted doing lately, or accused of in court proceedings would land you or me in jail. For a long time. It’s hilarious to listen to the FPD apologists bemoan the “lynch-type mob” of protesters that want answers before the official cover-up, er, investigation is over, thus denying our fine officers “due process.”

The latest example of the double standard that exists is the revelation that the Kelly Thomas killers were permitted to view (and review, and review again, one surmises) the taxpayer-owned video that shows the killing. This is just fine and dandy according to interim Chief Kevin Hamilton because it helps our boys in blue refresh their memory as they cook up and orchestrate plausible accounts of what they did. But it is not okay for for the public to see the video because it might color the recollections of eye-witnesses!

The same crapola is going on with the request to hire one Michael Gennaco to come into Fullerton and have a look around. Forget the fact that this is going to end up costing the taxpayers the better part of $100K. The real issue is why the City is embarking in this direction when the so-called investigations by the FPD, the DA, and the FBI are ongoing!

We are not permitted to seek answers while these alleged investigations are ongoing, and yet the Three Blind Mice (hopefully Whitaker and Quirk-Silva are smart enough to vote no) are willing to instigate yet another “investigation” at the same time.

It seems very clear to me that the Gennaco hiring, and the attempt to make it appear as both an emergency and some sort of reform action is nothing but a PR gimmick to make the City look like it is finally doing something proactive in the wake of the Kelly Thomas homicide. Of course it’s nothing but a cheap trick to try to stem the tide of public relations disasters that have befallen Fullerton since the image of Kelly’s battered face and crushed neck went globally viral.

July 10, 2011July 11, 2011Behind Closed Doors

The Latest County Melt Down

by Mr. Peabody23 Comments

Campbell — OC's Boss Tweed steps in it. Again.

Okay, Friends this one is a bit convoluted so stick with me.

The latest State budget deal takes about $50 million away from Orange County. How come? Best I can figure it out is this: after the bankruptcy of 1995 the County sold recovery bonds and the State sequestered about $50,000,000 annually to pay off the bond holders from part of the Vehicle License Fee that was distributed to the County. Later when the VLF was swapped out for property tax income the payoff to bondholders still came from the VLF. When OC refinanced it’s debt in 2006 it started taking the VLF money directly from the State even though no other county got any of it.

Confused? In 2006 County Supervisor Bill Campbell said he wasn’t, but he failed to do anything about the money hanging out there according to Voice of OC (EA)’s Norberto Santana, here. It seems he didn’t want to address the issue and hoped everybody would forget about it. That lame strategy worked for about 5 years. Now the State is laying claim to the dough.

The worst malefactor here is County CEO Tom Mauk who has yet another catastrophe to lay claim to. Following swiftly on the heels of the disastrous Human Resource Department audit in which Mauk was busted giving his cronies huge raises and promotions, this latest calamity may prove to be the final nail in Mauk’s coffin.

Will three supervisors finally perform self cranial-rectal extraction and get rid of this bozo? They aren’t very bright but sooner or later…

Stay tuned.