More Anti-Anaheim blog baloney. . . .

Today, the Anti-Anaheim blog has new post out, written supposedly by an anonymous contributor named Anaheim Insider.

"At the November 13, 2012 Anaheim City Council meeting, the council wanted to form an ad hoc committee to oversee the city’s negotiations with the Angels regarding an extension on their lease. The council majority planned to name Councilmember Gail Eastman and Councilmember Kris Murray to the ad hoc committee as Mayor Tom Tait had previously claimed a potential conflict of interest because he owned property across from Angels Stadium and his engineering business operated out of a neighboring building.

This is where it gets interesting. In response to an inquiry about the Mayor’s conflict, the Anaheim City Council minutes report what happened next:

“At the request of the Mayor, the City Attorney reported that Mayor Tait had previously secured an advice letter from the Fair Political Practices Commission indicating … he would not have a conflict of interest under the Political Reform Act.”

It has been a couple of months since the city attorney made this interpretation of the FPPC conflict letter. The letter was never made available.

But just last week the FPPC letter was made public. The letter, addressed a question posed by the City Attorney, and this is what was asked:

“May Mayor Tait take part in decisions concerning the city-owned Angel Stadium property if he transfers his ownership interest in real property within 500 feet of the Angel Stadium property to his adult, non-dependent children and amends the lease relating to his leasehold interest in a portion of the same property to prohibit him from profiting from any sublease, assignment or transfer of that leasehold?”

So that was the question asked by the City Attorney about Mayor Tait’s conflicts. And here is the FPPC’s answer:

“By transferring his entire ownership interest in 2130 Orangewood LLC, Mayor Tait will no longer have a disqualifying economic interest in the two parcels of real property owned by that entity. However, Mayor Tait will still have an economic interest in the leasehold which will be directly involved in any governmental decisions involving Angel Stadium.”

“Mayor Tait may not make, participate in making, or influence the decisions unless he can (rebut 5 factors) and determine there is no reasonably foreseeable material financial effects on any other economic interest he may have.”

Apparently the city attorney felt she could interpret all of this as – “Mayor Tait has no conflict.”

(Read the FPPC conflict letter for yourself. You can get a copy of the advice letter from the FFPC. The file number of this advice letter is # A-12-063, dated May 22, 2012.)

It is clear that the city attorney did not to give accurate legal advice. But the real question is whether she should have been fired or allowed to resign for this breach?

The mayor and councilmembers rely on the City Attorney for expert legal advice. When he or she gives poor, unsound or incomplete advice, it is the mayor and councilmembers relying on it who bear the consequences, legal as well as to their reputations."

The problem is Anaheim Insider deliberately left out key segments of the FPPC e-mail response. Here is the whole response (the portion Anaheim Insider left out in bold):

By transferring his entire ownership interest in 2130 Orangewood LLC, Mayor Tait will no longer have a disqualifying economic interest in the two parcels of real property owned by that entity. However, Mayor Tait will still have an economic interest in the leasehold which will be directly involved in any governmental decisions involving Angel Stadium. His proposed amendment to the lease should provide sufficient proof that it is not reasonably foreseeable that governmental decisions affecting Angel Stadium will have any effect on the value of Mayor Tait's right to sublease the real property, either positively or negatively, as set forth in regulation 18705.2(2)(C). 

Then Anaheim Insider goes on to quote another portion of the letter with portions missing:

This notwithstanding, Mayor Tait may not make, participate in making, or influence the decisions unless he can (1) rebut the presumption of materiality by showing that it is not reasonably foreseeable the decisions will have any financial effect on any of the remaining factors enumerated in Regulation 18705.2(a)(2)(A)-(E) with respect to his leasehold interest, and (2) determine that there will be no reasonably foreseeable material financial effects on any other economic interests he may have. 

So if Mayor Tait did what Talley suggested:

1. transfer ownership

2. amends the leasehold

then Mayor Tait has no conflict and he can participate any negotiations related to Angel Stadium. Once again, the Anti-Anaheim blog insinuates wrong doing and maligns the character of our former City Attorney Cristina Talley with no merits.

Anti-Anaheim Blog 2

The latest blog post, on the not to be mentioned other Anaheim centric site, concerns the Anaheim Angels. Sadly the entire post is lacks any credibility, just like the man who runs the blog.

Here are some lines from the post that will give you the sense of why it is baloney:

"Word has been spreading in OC political circles about comments Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait made a couple of weeks ago at a meeting with the Orange County Business Council’s executive board. According to sources who were present, Tait let it be known he would be willing to let the Angels leave rather than spend even a dime of taxpayer money to keep the team in Anaheim. The mayor also said that in his opinion, the Angels didn’t bring a lot of value to Anaheim."

Who are your sources anonymous blog contributor? Do you have an audio/video recording to back up your claims? 

But what if these claims were to be true? Well thankfully a commentator named Biff (I have know idea who this person) has made some very intelligent remarks on this story:

"I’m a homeowner and a family man in his late 30s who grew up in Orange County and has been living in downtown Anaheim for the past nine years. And the more attention I’ve paid to our city government, the more frustrated and cynical I’ve become. The Pringle/Murray/OCBC/CoC bloc seems to believe that ‘a job is a job is a job’ — and that any action they take in the name of MORE JOBS NOW is the right thing to do. But to my mind, these subsidies have us paying top dollar for the very worst kind of low-wage, low-skill, zero-benefit jobs — and then have us paying AGAIN, because in focusing on these low-wage jobs, we’ve just filled our city with an underclass that’s dependent on social services to make ends meet. Declaring that there’s no price too high to keep the Angels around is yet another facet of this jobs-at-any-cost philosophy.

Any responsible city leader should say that while we don’t want the Angels to leave Anaheim, he or she is willing to let it happen. Moreno is going to try to play our city for as much as he possibly can — in response, our city needs to put any rah-rah sentimentality aside and let him know there’s a limit. And again, multiple studies have shown that sports teams don’t bring anywhere near the level of economic benefit that boosters claim they do. Two economists who studied how pro sports strikes and lockouts affected local economies found there was virtually no effect — in a ‘substitution effect’, people simply spent the money that they were spending at the stadium on other forms of entertainment. Municipalities saved money, as they didn’t have to provide their usual gameday public safety response.

(And it’s nice to know that Orange County would be upset if the Angels left, but I don’t recall ‘Orange County’ stepping up to replace the broken slide that sat for months in the park across the street from my house, or offering to replace laid-off librarians. Anyone outside of Anaheim who wants to complain that we’re not giving the Angels everything they want can hold a bake sale to make up the difference, or they can cram it. For a city with so many “economic engines” and “world-class” this and thats, why is it that we look so threadbare most of the time?)"