Costa Mesa is ground zero for the California war against public employees, the bloody tip of the spear.

The Orange County GOP has chosen this middle-class burg as their laboratory and given pink slips to 213 employees, even before making any analysis of whether his planned outsourcing makes any fiscal sense.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer has been beating his chest on John and Ken and appearing all over the local news in Southern California.  

Riggy’s spiel always includes his description of the pension crisis in Costa Mesa, which he describes like this, “Ten years ago Costa Mesa paid 5 million for public pensions. Now we pay 15 million a year, and CalPERS projects that five years from now we will be paying 25 million. His allies point to this scary, scary graph that was presented at a study session in Costa Mesa in February.

There’s only one problem. It’s phony as a three dollar bill. Click “There’s more” to see an honest graph.

When I first saw that graph, it just seemed screwy, so I went to the City of Costa Mesa web site to see the back-up documentation. Surprisingly, there was none. I made a visit to Costa Mesa City Hall to see what was in the agenda packet. “Only the Powerpoint”, the City Clerk told me.

I persevered with requests under the Public Records Act, talked to current and former Council members in Orange County, got comparative figures from other cities, and remained mystified.

Of course it made sense that pension costs had increased since 2000. Back then, Costa Mesa had superfunded pensions and didn’t even have to make the employer’s share of the contribution. Lately, pension rates have increased, but Costa Mesa has also cut over a hundred employees, including police and fire.

In October 2010, Costa Mesa employees agreed to pay an additional $3.6 million a year in pension costs that are just now going into effect. That’s why the expenditures for 2011-2012 decrease even while there was a marked increase in CalPERS rates used in the City’s projections.

I’ve emailed back and forth with the new $3,000 a week communications director, Bill Lobdell, who promises to get back to me next week.

So finally, I pulled out the October 2010 actuarial valuation reports that I had received from the City of Costa Mesa, and made my own projections and graph. Here’s what it looks like over a six year period. The numbers through 2011-2012 come from the City’s report. The next two years are my projection.

Not so scary, eh?

There’s one huge difference. The City’s projection includes a notation that says, “includes employee reimbursement from current contracts only”. I am assuming that the employees of the City of Costa Mesa will continue to pay the same share of the pension contribution that they are paying now.

Really, could anyone believe that Costa Mesa’s radical Republican City Council is going to negotiate new contracts that involve picking up a bigger share of the pensions.?

Following are my assumptions. I am challenging the City of Costa Mesa to show theirs.

*2012-2013 projection based on October 2010 CalPERS reports that projects increase in city’s share of pension costs using actual 2009-10 investment returns.from

**2013-2014 projection based on October 2010 CalPERS report where CalPERS projects five different rates based on FY 2010-2011 investment returns, which are quite good so far this year.

FY 2013-14 projection is based on blended rate between 3rd scenario with 7.75% return (47th percentile) and 4th scenario with 16% return (75th percentile)for this fiscal year.

(Appendix D-1 of each report.)

Assumption of compensation subject to pension for each pool (estimates) used to calculate increase in City’s share of pension costs

For FY 2011-2012 with no changes for 2012-13, 2013-14

Sworn fire 13 million

Sworn police 18 million

Everyone else 20 million

In an earlier post called Wisconsin Comes to Costa Mesa, I wrote that “Costa Mesa is at the bloody tip of the spear in California Republicans’ war against public employees.”

I meant that metaphorically.

Today it became literal as one of the 213 laid-off employees leaped to his death from the 5th floor roof of Costa Mesa City Hall.

Employees are stunned, yet nobody is surprised.

Costa Mesa’s pension crisis was phony. Its budget crisis was vastly overblown.

But Jim Righeimer, a ruthless Republican ideologue trying to position himself for higher office, was trying to show that he was the real OC anti-employee, anti-pension, anti-union crusader. Riggy took advantage of a vacant seat to name one of his cronies, Steve Mensinger, to the City Council, and the two of them have pushed to outsource employees in 18 city departments. Two other weak-minded Republican Council members followed along.

They didn’t do any studies about cost effectiveness. They didn’t show their work. They just appointed a two-person committee that arbitrarily came up with a list of departments that might benefit from outsourcing, then rammed it through in a single Council meeting.

And because they were required to give six months’ notice to any employee they were to lay off, they arbitrarily issued pink slips to 213 employees on Thursday, March 17th.

It wasn’t just the fact of the pink slips.

Riggy is an arrogant bully, as is Mensinger. Instead of serving as part-time Council members, they have taken up residence in City Hally, threatening and bullying workers on a daily basis, arrogating power to themselves, and justifying their pompous pronouncements with a relentless series of lies and half-truths.

They’re not very different from some of the Assembly members from the OC. Don Wagner and Allan Mansoor are cut from the same cloth. Righeimer was a one-time roommate of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, as well as his campaign manager. He shares an office suite with lobbyist and former Assembly leader Scott Baugh.

Tempers are high.

The Orange County Register,reports.

Councilmen Jim Righeimer and Stephen Mensinger were threatened by a city employee at the scene, who ran toward the councilmen before being restrained by three coworkers. Another city employee said “You’re not welcome here,” referring to the councilmen.

Peter Naghavi, director of public works, was seen crying and consoling other city employees.

Nick Berardino, general manager of the Orange County Employees Association, was seen cursing out city CEO Tom Hatch in the lobby of City Hall.

“You cannot give out notices wholesale like that in this economy,” Berardino said. “That’s what’s going to happen.”

An LA Times article continues to try to provide coverage with false balance, quoting Stewart Drown and Joe Nation, two of the apologists for the anti-pension jihad. Curiously, the LA Times continues to restate the discredited claim that Costa Mesa’s pension costs will rise from 15 million to 25 million in a few years.

It’s not a new model. It’s the same model that the Republican party is trying across the country of attempting to destroy organized labor and roll back the safety network.

And it’s killing people.

Here’s a local blog story on Riggy which is also a rant on the sad nature of the alternative OCWeekly, sister to the LA Weekly.

By Jack Eidt and Jerry Collamer, wilderutopia.com

Why They Call it Disaster

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Western Regional Director told me point blank, one month ago, after me peppering him with San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) post-reactor meltdown scenarios:

“That’s why they call it Disaster.”

Disaster: the past-present tense of our here and now, when we’re not careful.  Disaster can be avoided, if you just don’t go there.  Yet our human nature is to go, to build, to deny the omnipotent laws of nature, then suffer that all too familiar consequence – Disaster.

That’s what Mr. FEMA / Mr. Disaster was getting at.  FEMA and First-Responders, don’t prevent Disaster.  They mop up after.  But Disaster can be preempted, or avoided entirely just by doing the right thing: utilize good common sense.

An official with Southern California Edison says the seaside plant has an outer shell made of concrete 4-feet thick and is designed to capture an unexpected release of radiation. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times / March 15, 2011)

It Can’t Happen Here?

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register published the reassuring words of Southern California Edison (SCE) officials and academic seismologists, claiming quake-meltdown-disaster could never happen here.  The plant is designed for a 7.0 temblor and Japan’s 8.9 and the associated tsunami are “highly unlikely.”

Consider, however, a study from 2008 by the California Energy Commission called “An Assessment of California’s Nuclear Power Plants, AB 1632 Report.”  It states that the region could experience larger and more frequent earthquakes than had been anticipated when the plant was designed, due to the late discovery of underground “blind thrust” faults. It goes on to recommend further study to characterize the seismic hazard, since less is known about the seismic setting than more fully studied Diablo Canyon in Central California.

The uncertainties are with regard to “continuity, structure and earthquake potential” of the nearby South Coast Offshore Fault Zone, and the faulting that connects to the Los Angeles (Newport-Inglewood Fault) and San Diego (Rose Canyon Fault) regions.  There is also the potenial for as yet undiscovered blind thrust faults near the plant.  A Long-Term Seismic Program is recommended to consider the as yet not-fully-considered.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, they also claimed “It won’t happen here.”  The latter plant was designed for only a 7.9 quake as the “worst case scenario.”

As well, a study from the Electric Power Research Institute admits: “The Richter scale alone does not capture the dangers or risks posed by specific quakes.”  Multiple, unforeseen disasters, quake, tsunami, floods, loss of both primary and backup power, pose the real dangers to an undertaking as complicated and dangerous as nuclear fission.

The California Energy Commission study also mentioned submarine landslides could generate large local tsunamis, a fact not fully understood when SONGS was built.  While some consider the 30-foot-high reinforced concrete “tsunami wall” as invincible, others have questioned its durability.  Sadly, the walls protecting the Fukushima Daiichi facilities did not stop the backup generators from being flooded, causing the fail.

What have the SCE engineers and academic seismologists not fully considered here, when the Big One hits?

San Onofre Earthquake – What If?

Consider SONGS’ precarious seating arrangement: on sand – over a fault – at water’s edge.  Then consider its age.

A SONGS 7.5 earthquake scenario:

1) SONGS sinks into its suddenly liquified sand base / liquefaction

2) Tsunami like ocean occurrence overwhelms SONGS’ crumbling sea wall, swamping the cracking, steaming, radiating, eternally hot hell-hole that was moments before SONGS

3) Remains too hot to handle for 50,000 years, or longer. But who’s counting?

Are we prepared for that?

Or something half that?

Or a third that?

Or a quarter that?

It Can Happen

Test Model: Japan – July 16, 2007.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Facility in Niigata Prefecture on the northwest coast of Japan falls victim to a 6.8 shaker.  Built over a fault, in an earthquake prone region, at waters edge.  Though damage to the facility was limited and “less than expected,” radioacive iodine did escape from a leaking pipe.  Ground motion caused water to slosh in the spent nuclear fuel storage pool and spill into the nuclear plant’s reactor buildings.  Contaminated water leaked into the Sea of Japan from damaged conduits.  SCE uses both pools and dry cask storage.  A loss of cooling event could be precipitated by an earthquake or terrorist event; SCE claims they are safe.

And now the ongoing post-quake-tsunami crisis at Fukushima.

Most asked question post Japanese disaster:

“Why did you build it there?”

The engineers planned and built SONGS (before super seismic hazard mapping computer models, before they knew there was a fault sleeping beneath it) designed it to last until 2013.  Not 2014, 2015, 2016, or 2020 (as it has recently been approved for).

So who’ya gonna trust?  The engineers who created SONGS?  Building it to a 2013 end date – or SONGS owner-operator Edison, working to extend SONGS’ shaky, aged existence to 2020 or longer – on sand, over a fault, at water’s edge?

Remember Mr. FEMA’s tutorial:

“That’s why they call it, Disaster.”

Using common sense is the antidote to a SONGS disaster: 2013-end-date, game over.

See the related story: “San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station: Scariest Workplace in the USA” by Jerry Collamer.

Jack Eidt and Jerry Collamer are founders of Wild Heritage Planners, based in Southern California.

As documented at Pacific Progressive and in local Costa Mesa blog, A Bubbling Cauldron, Costa Mesa is at the bloody tip of the spear in California Republicans’ war against public employees.

Newly-elected Council Member Jim Righeimer and recently-appointed Council Member Steve Mensinger are leading the ideologically-driven jihad, with an agenda item to give notice to 250 Costa Mesa employees that their jobs will be outsourced. This represents a third of the city’s public employees in a wide range of departments. Without any study of the problem, Righeimer has also used local columnist Frank Mickadeit, to float an ill-conceived idea to privatize paramedic service in this column.

Their notice fails to take into account the opinion of Costa Mesa’s City Attorney, which required that notice be given after a decision has been made to outsource, not based on a vague idea to study outsourcing. But, in a move that some see as directly related to the direction of the new City Council, the City Attorney has resigned and the City Manager abruptly retired.

As in Wisconsin, Republicans are battling a phantom “budget crisis” which is disappearing after Costa Mesa residents approved an increase in the hotel tax in November to protect public services and as revenues from sales taxes return.

A massive phantom gap in future pension costs for public employees is forecast, although the cost to the city has been flat for years as public employee unions have picked up part of the cost.

You may not recognize Jim Righeimer’s name, but he has been one of the movers of Republican politics in Orange County for decades, managing Dana Rohrabacher’s Congressional campaign in 2008, as a founding member of the Education Alliance, and as a co-author of prop 226. Righeimer and his brother-in-law Mark Bucher have led movement conservatives through groups like the Family Action PAC. Support by Riggy and his regressive allies helped elect wacky movement conservative Don Wagner (R-Irvine), Assembly leader of the Taxpayer Caucus.

State news sources don’t reach behind the Orange Curtain, and the local newspaper, the Orange County Register, uses their near-monopoly for almost daily attacks on public employee pensions, not just with commentary but with daily slanted headlines and news coverage.

Costa Mesa is the beachhead, but other Orange County elected Republicans attended OC Republican chair Scott Baugh’s Pension Boot Camp, and are ready to go on the attack against public employees.

Update As expected, the Costa Mesa City Council voted Tuesday night to issue lay-off notices to over 150 workers and study privatizing paramedic service despite overwhelmingly negative testimony from city residents. Basically saying, “You’re Fired, but come back to work tomorrow”, the six-month notices will only go into effect if the Council approves outsourcing in 18 separate city departments, based on approval of $200,000 to study reorganization of all city services.

How far do you have to get into the Little Hoover Commission report on pension reform to start questioning its results?

How about the graph on page ii that shows the percentage of funding of major pension funds in California.

It looks pretty bad, but then when you look closely, the numbers just don’t look right.

CalPERS, the last time I looked, had around 230 billion dollar invested in a broad portfolio of assets, but the handy chart that shows that CALPers is only 61% funded has a value on the graph that looks like it’s around 180 billion.

A quick check of the footnotes shows that the chart was based on numbers from the end of the fiscal year 2008-2009, not the most recent fiscal year.

How important is that?

Well, the value of CALPers investments as of June 30th, 2009 was $178.9 billion. By the date that the Little Hoover report was released, that number had increased by 50 billion dollars. Even using numbers from the end of FY 09-10 would have been much more honest, but the rebound from market bottoms is only mentioned in passing in the body of the report.

This is not a trivial difference, and CALPers is not unique in posting large gains since the market bottom. CALStrs is the second largest pension fund in the state and covers teachers and community college professors. Since March 2009, when markets bottomed after a global financial Great Recession, the CalSTRS investment portfolio has rebounded by more than $34.8 billion to $146.4 billion.

Little Hoover = Big Lie.

More on this later.

Stories at Voice of OC here and here as well as a story right here at Calitics continue to reveal the shenanigans at the Orange County Fair Board.

Today we learned that the FPPC has begun an investigation of former Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman for illegal lobbying.

Governor Brown has three choices as to how to unravel the mess that Schwarzenegger and his cronies created in Orange County.

The first choice is to negotiate with representatives from the Orange County Fair Board, who have been contriving some “revenue sharing plan”. Hopefully, the Governor and his staff will have a chance to read  this profile of Fair Board Member Dave Ellis , current Fair Board Chair and shadowy Republican political operative. Given Ellis’ actions and contempt for open government laws, we’re hoping that Jerry Brown just summarily fires Ellis when he arrives in Sacramento as one of the Fair Board’s authorized negotiators.

Dealing with the Orange County Fair Board would be the governmental equivalent of negotiating with terrorists.

The second choice is to eat the fruit of the poisonous tree, and accept the pending offer from a group of local Orange County millionaires to purchase the Fairgrounds.  

After Dave Ellis’ schemes collapsed under the weight of public scrutiny, Schwarzenegger continued the bidding process, this time to the advantage of other Republican insiders, operating under the name FMW.

FMW has made a full press offense trying to justify their deal, with full page advertising in local papers and support from newly elected Assemblyman Allan “Minute” Mansoor.

But there are a lot of question about this group, and about the players.

In the words of Dave Padilla, former Fair Grounds Director, and the only Director who refused to play with Ellis’schemes,

Given that the deal makes no financial sense for the state, and given that the community is overwhelmingly opposed to the sale, many have searched throughout the process to find the governor’s (Schwarzenegger’s)  motivation. The focus of the “why” speculation now seems to be on financial payoff to his political supporters…

And, given all we know now, there certainly is a pattern of events to justify that suspicion. First we find out that Joanne Kozberg, a partner in California Strategies, one of the state’s most powerful lobbying firms, chaired the governor’s study that first raised and legitimized the idea of selling the Fairgrounds. Then we find out that Gary Hunt, a partner of Joanne Kozberg in California Strategies and the governor’s former chief fundraiser has been representing FMW in what is, I am sure, a very lucrative contract throughout the so-called negotiations to buy the Fairgrounds.

There seem to be as many questions surrounding the genesis of the FMW bid as there are surrounding the mysterious midnight Big 5 deal that put the OC Fairgrounds up for sale.

The third choice, and the one that offers great political capital, is to reject both offers outright, and use the opportunity to attack corporate cronyism and wasteful practice of local  government agencies paying hundreds of dollars an hour to overpriced Sacramento lobbyists.

Our new Governor has already launched surprise attacks on two of the great boondoggles in the state – redevelopment and enterprise zones.

Now it’s time to take a stab at the half a billion dollar a year spent on lobbying in Sacramento.  Take a whack at the guys at Capitol Strategies, Platinum Advisors, and the rest of the high dollar consultants who put together deals. Propose a bill that will preclude any local government funding for lobbyists, since it appears that local  government agencies, at 83 million a year, are the number one source of lobbying funds.

If local governments are on the ropes financially, let them cut lobbyists, lawyers and consultants before they start laying off teachers, paramedics, and police officers.  

Within the next month we will  see how Governor Brown deals with some of the left-over issues that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could not muscle through, including the sale of state assets to well-connected political cronies.

Much attention is being paid to the sale and lease back of state office buildings, but in Orange County, we continue to be amazed by the unfolding  evidence of the conspiracy behind the attempt to sell the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Is conspiracy too harsh a word?  Let’s look at a document dump that was partially unveiled this week by nonprofit investigative journalists in a voice of OC story. These documents begin to show how an Assembly bill to sell the Orange County Fairgrounds suddenly materialized on July 23, 2009 and was passed in the middle of the night without hearings or public notice.

It’s a long complicated story, and the Schwarzenegger administration was desperately trying to close a deal before they left town, only to be held up by a court order.

An obscure Sacramento joint powers authority, the California Construction Authority (CCA), responded promptly to document requests and shared documents that the Orange County Fair Board had failed to produce.  The CCA was the agency where OC Fair board members buried their $160,000 in spending to lobbyists so that the details and expenditures could be hidden from public records requests and kept from agendas. Lobbying activities and secret plans to create a corporation to purchase the fairgrounds were billed through the CCA under a contract to  an environmental consulting firm, LSA Associates, Inc. LSA had been retained in January 2009 for environmental studies of replacing the equestrian center with additional parking, after serving since 2000 as the land use consultant for master planning of the Orange County Fairgrounds.

The Voice of OC story focuses on the the billing records of  former State Senator Dick Ackerman’s law firm, Nossaman LLP. If you don’t remember Dick Ackerman, he was the Senate Majority Leader until he was termed out at the end of 2008. Billing records show that Ackerman was paid $500 an hour to  contact state agencies, legislators and even paid to do research on whether his effort violated the restriction on former legislators lobbying their previous colleagues.

An investigation by the OC District Attorney cleared Ackerman, although it is difficult to believe that they ever  bothered checking his billing records.  If they had, they would have had a very difficult time reconciling their conclusion with the details, and with the dates of the action.  

There was no public discussion or fair board approval to hire Ackerman’s legal firm, Nossaman LLP. or the powerhouse lobbyists Platinum Advisors, until a Fair Board meeting of July 28th, 2009. But the billing records from Nossaman show that Ackerman and his firm  began working on May 23rd, and incurred $50,000 in charges before they were authorized by any board action.

Similarly, the lobbying firm Platinum Advisors billed $25,000 for their services before July 28th.  A series of meetings, conferences, an appraisal, and other services were billed against the unrelated LSA contracts which were only written to cover land use planning.

The mastermind behind the scheme was Fair Board member Dave Ellis, a well-connected political operative and Fair Board member who had 13 documented meetings and conference calls  noted on the billing records before there was any discussion or approval to hire the various  well-connected lobbyists and consultants.

What were Ellis, Ackerman, and their colleagues doing in their calls to Fred Aguiar in the Governor’s office, powerful State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, and local members of the Orange County legislative delegation? Every indication is that they were getting legislation written that would authorize the sale of the Fairgrounds, and at the same time organizing the bidding process so that a nonprofit corporation they created would have the inside track at purchasing the property.

Here’s one of the entries in the Nossaman LLP billing entries that shows what was really happening,

Six days before anyone knew that the sale of the Fairgrounds would be a last minute addition to the Big 5 all night budget marathon, eleven days before Dave Ellis expressed surprise and a motion was made authorizing him to hire whatever experts he needed, they were figuring out how to control the bid process and conditions of sale with an appraisal that they have even now failed to disclose.

State law has many prohibitions against the Fair Board shenanigans, but they become relatively toothless when your local District Attorney has a history of ignoring even the most egregious violations.

However, there is one law that provides for treble damages for phony bills, and that is the False Claims Act, California Code section 12650 to 12656, which enacts stiff penalties for anyone who

Is it a false claim to submit billing for environmental planning when the real work that was done was something completely different?

If it wasn’t wrong, why did the Fair Board and its CEO, Steve Beazley, go to such lengths to cover it up, failing to provide documents in response to written public records act requests?

As Attorney General, Jerry Brown got wind of the stench of this deal and declined to continue to represent the 32nd Agricultural District, which is  the state agency that actually runs the Orange County Fair.

Now the Governor’s path forward is clear.

First, demand the resignation of all of the directors of the Orange County Fair Board, and ask for a thorough investigation by both the California Attorney General and  US Attorney’s office, not just of  Ackerman’s role, the actions of Frank Haselton at LSA, the actions of Ellis and CEO Beazley, but also of the apparent false claims and  numerous, repeated  actions taken in secret.

Second, reject the deal that Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to push through at the last minute until all of the dirty laundry has been aired and the public has had a chance to see the inner workings of government by crony. There are too many questions that need to be answered for this process to go forward unchallenged.

In Orange County, the county fair was operated for years as a political patronage machine, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in free concert tickets doled out by the political cronies appointed to the board. Debbie Corona, wife of convicted felon Sheriff Mike Corona, was one of the directors who took full advantage of thousands of free concert tickets.

Fair Board members tried to obtain control of the property so that they could restore their patronage machine, and they pretended that this was a “budget solution” with “local control” which was going to help California balance its massive debt.

Jerry Brown gave a great State of the State address, with one signature line,

I have not come here to embrace delay or denial, but to get the job done. If you have solutions that are truly viable, by all means present them. We need everyone’s best thinking.

My best thinking is to remember the real lessons of the last Progressive Era, including open government and end to patronage and cronyism.

Let’s start right now with the Orange County Fairgrounds.