Finally OC Register finds a week old BRANDMAN story

From The Liberal OC:

We’ve been waiting for the Orange County Register to cover the story about JordanBrandman’s Wiki-report for the past eight days. We are pleased to say, they finally found the story and decided they had to cover it. Yesterday afternoon, Andrew Galvin, the Register’s county government beat reporter wrote about the toll Brandman’s contract may have on the prospects for Acting Clerk-Recorder Renee Ramirez getting the jobpermanently. (Read: Consulting contract complicates clerk-recorder appointment)

Can't say we didn't warn ya.

Since Galvin does make mention of the controversy over Brandman’s performance as a contractor, he moved the Affliction Counter back to zero days. Galvin was able to get Brandman to take his call and answer at least one question about the controversy:

In a brief interview this week, Brandman said, “I am fulfilling the obligations of my contract with the clerk-recorder.” Brandman declined to explain why he requested two deadline extensions. He also declined to comment on the allegation that the section of his draft covering population demographics was lifted from Wikipedia.

So at this point we are pulling the Affliction Counter until we find the Register ignoring a story that Afflicts the comfortable political elite in Orange County.

Watch OC Supervisor Shawn Nelson share his thoughts on Jordan Brandman:

Jordan Brandman Plagiarized Report

From The Voice of OC:

A report prepared by Anaheim City Councilman Jordan Brandman for Orange County’s Clerk-Recorder – which contained an entire section that was apparently largely copied from the Wikipedia entry on Orange County – contained clear examples of plagiarism and was problematic “on a number of levels,” a leading government ethics expert said Monday morning.

Judy Nadler, senior fellow at the Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said that the report embodies the “exact opposite” of the origin of the phrase “good enough for government work,” which originally implied high standards.

Jordan Brandman and members of the Masters of the Universe club.

Based on what’s she’s seen, Nadler questioned whether Orange County has basic contracting protections in place.

“I have no idea how Orange County operates, but if I were presented with this as a public official, I would not be inclined to accept it as it is. Because its something that frankly a high school intern could have done, anyone could have done,” Nadler said. “I'm just really curious about what Orange County has as its standards. I'd be really surprised and disappointed to see if you could submit anything you want.”

Read the full story here:

http://www.voiceofoc.org/county/article_21b29fd8-906c-11e2-9b2c-001a4bcf887a.html

Jordan Brandman's $24,000 Wiki-Report

From The Voice of OC:

An entire section of a government draft report prepared by Anaheim City Councilman Jordan Brandman while he was campaigning for his council seat last year appears to largely have been copied from the Wikipedia entry on Orange County, a Voice of OC review of the report has found.

Ad Save Anaheim's PAC ran during the last election.

The revelation about the copy-and-paste job in the the report prepared for the county clerk-recorder's office – for which Brandman has so far been paid $24,000 – adds to growing questions about his consulting contract and work product, with two county supervisors alleging last week that the councilman was inappropriately compensated for work he didn't finish.

County Supervisor Todd Spitzer said that Brandman should not have been paid a dime for draft work. And Supervisor John Moorlach said the report could have been done in a few hours. In Moorlach's estimation, the county has already paid 24 times what the report is actually worth.

After learning about the Wikipedia entry in Brandman's report, Moorlach questioned whether the councilman's contract to prepare the report, which was awarded by former Orange County Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly, was merely a guise by his mentor to support Brandman with county funds while he campaigned for office.

“It puts into question the authenticity of the request” to prepare the report, Moorlach said, adding that a refund demand from Brandman is “certainly on the table,” along with new rules on county contracting.

Moorlach stopped short of directly accusing Brandman and Daly of impropriety, saying that “everyone has their day in court” and that he would hold off on such conclusions until after a “thorough investigation.”

Read the full story here:

http://www.voiceofoc.org/oc_north/anaheim/article_52c807b4-8f9c-11e2-8890-0019bb2963f4.html

Brandman's $24,000 pay day

From The Voice of OC:

Orange County’s Clerk-Recorder paid Anaheim City Councilman Jordan Brandman $24,000 for an incomplete report while he was campaigning for office last year, raising questions from two county supervisors about whether the county inappropriately compensated Brandman for a draft report he hasn’t finished.

“You can't pay a consultant for work that's in draft form,” said County Supervisor Todd Spitzer Tuesday after reviewing Brandman’s contract and report. “None of these payments should have been made.”

Jordan Brandman

Brandman has not returned phone calls for comment on his consulting contract.

He first arrived at the Clerk Recorder’s office in 2011 as an “external relations manager,” although it’s largely unclear what he actually did. Clerk recorder officials deleted Brandman’s public calendar. And most of Brandman’s work-related email traffic released by the office in response to a public records request by Voice of OC only shows that he was often out of the office at offsite meetings.

He resigned that position just as his city council campaign was gearing up and later secured the consulting arrangement.

Most of his facilities report – which is a study about whether the clerk-recorder needs a branch office in West Orange County – rehashes publicly available data from the U.S. Census, the state Department of Finance, the clerk-recorder's office and other “multimedia” sources, according to a draft obtained by Voice of OC.

Read the full story here:

http://www.voiceofoc.org/county/article_737763ae-8c79-11e2-8d1f-0019bb2963f4.html

Todd Spitzer shared the story on his Facebook Fan page.

Brandman’s County Consulting Contract Raises Questions

From The Voice of OC:

The Orange County clerk-recorder's office is refusing to release a report prepared by Anaheim City Councilman Jordan Brandman that was originally due six months ago because it is still in “draft” form, raising questions about whether the councilman failed to fully complete the tasks of his taxpayer-funded contract while he was campaigning for office. Jordan Brandman, who was hired as a staffer at the clerk-recorder’s office in 2011, resigned toward to the end of the year as his City Council campaign geared up.

He was then granted an individual services contract on Jan. 31.

Brandman's firm, Jordan Brandman Consulting, was to be paid $24,900 to prepare a facilities needs study on possibly opening a clerk-recorder's department branch office in west Orange County, according to the contract.

The contract's end date was supposed to be July 31, 2012. But then the county gave Brandman an extension through Jan. 31. His compensation amount was increased to $26,400, a contract amendment shows.

During that time, Brandman had been campaigning for his council seat, which he won handily.

It is unclear whether Brandman has been paid under the contract or exactly what he did to earn any compensation. Brandman did not return a call seeking comment.

Read the full story here:

http://www.voiceofoc.org/county/article_9377e54c-8a63-11e2-aab5-001a4bcf887a.html

Scandals could STOP Disney

From the OC Politics Blog:

“Anaheim city officials are weighing whether to release a politically explosive email that raises troubling questions about whether local officials knowingly misrepresented facts to the federal government in order to obtain transportation grant funding,” according to the Voice of OC.

The Voice of OC also reported that “City Hall sources who have seen the email, including Mayor Tom Tait, say that on its face the correspondence shows that Natalie Meeks, the city’s public works director, and Darrell Johnson, deputy CEO of the Orange County Transportation Authority, may have colluded to misrepresent information on an application for Federal Transit Authority funds for the $319-million streetcar project that would connect Disneyland to the city’s planned public transit depot.”

Anaheim City Attorney Cristina Talley was forced to resign, by the Council majority, because she advised that the records requested by activists and the media had to be turned over for review.

But in the end this scandal may well return Talley to her post – and could end up not only derailing the multi-million dollar street car system that Disney wants taxpayers to pay for, it could also result in the ouster of the Council majority.

In related news, the Voice of OC also reported that “Two planned four-star hotels near Anaheim’s GardenWalk mall could be built without taxpayer subsidies in one to two years, according to hotel financing experts, calling into question subsidy supporters’ central argument that the hotels can’t be built without the controversial incentives.”

You might recall that Disney, with their friends at the SOAR PAC, pushed hard over the past few years to spend hundreds of millions of hotel tax dollars on subsidizing the GardenWalk hotels.

Why Disney is so hot to burn through taxpayer money on unneeded street cars and hotels that should be financed privately is a very good question. Remember that Disney spent a fortune this past year to elect former Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly to represent the 68th Assembly District. Well they better enjoy it for now because Daly will surely lose in 2014 when area Latino activists run one good candidate against him. But for now he will be doing his best to push tax dollars into Disney’s corner – Mickey Mouse welfare if you will.

We should not tolerate Disney’s meddling in local politics and their desire to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.