Canary in the Mind: Pointing fingers to win elections

I didn't get to attend the first debate which kicked off the second half of Election 2007, but I did hear about some comments allegedly made by Councilman Dom Betro when asked a question about the Community Police Review Commission. I'm surprised he actually remembers what it is especially after everything that it has faced in the past 18 months in the face of silence from the dais while it was facing its most serious challenges and many say, attacks out of City Hall than it had ever faced since its formation in 2000.

His comments left some people wondering, was Betro saying that his rival, Mike Gardner was responsible for what happened with the CPRC?

This isn't the first time this issue has come up as these insinuations have been made though curiously enough pretty much exclusively during this current election cycle. Hopefully, Betro was smart and politically astute enough not to go there during a public forum because when it comes to his record supporting the CPRC, he's not standing on very solid ground himself. Still, there were questions about whether or not Betro really believes that Gardner is responsible for the "past" problems impacting the CPRC.

This issue makes an excellent topic for examination, as erroneous and some might say, opportunistic as this line of thinking is when shown in the light of day.

I've been asked what I thought about this finger pointing at Gardner. I respond as someone who has followed and advocated for the CPRC for seven years, been to nearly every open meeting and read every public document released by that body including every annual report. I've had conversations with commissioners including Gardner before and after his service on the CPRC as well as city residents both past and present and I'll advocate for it and defend its right to exist and carry out its powers and its responsibilities whether it's politically correct to do so or not and I don't need to stick my finger in the air before doing so like politicians and politically mindful people do.

It's interesting how there's so much silence while the commission languished this past year and then, finger pointing in a rather strange direction.

For those interested in reading the annual reports released by the CPRC, they are located here and are printed in pdf format. Let it be noted that under Gardner, the commission produced an annual report each year that he chaired it. That can't be said about current chair, Brian Pearcy's tenure which has yet to see an annual report released publicly or reported to the city council. The missing report was to have been released this past March but was not because of the current problems afflicting the CPRC created by other parties besides Gardner. Pearcy is not to blame for the lack of a public report because as has become abundantly clear, the chair of this commission has very little power compared to the various factions at City Hall and elsewhere in the city that have acted on the CPRC in a variety of ways. That reality applies both to Gardner and Pearcy to varying extents, both who faced different political environments when they chaired the commission.



Yet it seems that this past year, blame for the CPRC's problems has for some reason been laid at Gardner's door, even though during the past 18 months Gardner hasn't even been a member on the commission, having termed out in March 2006 after six official years of service.

Before that, he had served as its chair for three years, from 2003-2006, a stint which in itself is not typical. Usually a commissioner is only allowed to serve two consecutive terms as chair but the commissioners voted to change the bylaws to allow Gardner a third term. He did not face much or any opposition when he ran for chair and his performance as chair wasn't criticized publicly during his entire three-year stint.

No one showed up and told him at a meeting what a lousy job they thought he was doing.

One problem with the CPRC is that few of its members are willing for whatever reason to put themselves up to chair, but that's a dynamic which is still ongoing that impacts the commission as a whole not just in terms of one past member. As far as any public outcry against Gardner's record as chair of the commission, I guess that would have to come after the fact though the scope of it does appear to be fairly limited at this point in time.

This year's election for the chair position was so convoluted and confusing only the city attorney appeared to understand it enough to explain it. That process produced a chair who resigned from the commission within several weeks and was replaced by a vice-chair. Now, in some circles, it's not an uncommon tactic to get into a chair position through running for the vice-chair seat and nominating a candidate for chair who you know won't be serving out his or her term on the board or commission. For example, it's not a bad way to extend the tenure as a chair. This tactic has played out on boards and commissions in the past but isn't that common.

Then-Chair Les Davidson's resignation was inevitable because he was moving out of the city and consequently could not remain on the commission. Yet, he remained in the chair's race while a tie existed between him and Commissioner Jim Ward, only resigning after winning the election. This election was finally decided through a vote cast for Davidson by newcomer Peter Hubbard even though Hubbard had yet to attend a meeting and learn more about either candidate. How does one vote for a candidate on a commission when one hasn't even attended a meeting of that commission yet? Yet, Hubbard had his clear choice.

Hubbard had received the most support through votes of any commission candidate during the March selection process, including from Betro and Councilman Frank Schiavone as well as several others. In his interview, he said he filed his application for the CPRC to fill a hole in his life that arose when he finished a 10 year stint with the Board of Public Utilities. Recently, Betro had lamented the lack of knowledge of individuals applying for the CPRC, about the CPRC yet he enthusiastically pushed for Hubbard who knew little about the body himself as having the board experience to "hit the ground running" in response to what Betro called, the "current situation" impacting the CPRC even though it was clear that Hubbard knew little about the CPRC.


Lack of knowledge about the CPRC at an interview doesn't doom a person from being an effective or even great commissioner. The truth is that most commissioners, good or bad, expressed very little knowledge about the commission at their respective interviews particularly after the first two cycles of interviews. Few interviews have even been that great, yet some of these commission candidates became quite capable commissioners. What matters more is true interest and investment in community issues, an interest in improving the police department and the ability to put in the time commitment which City Hall greatly underscores in its brochures.

The most successful commissioners are also those who distance themselves from the political scene at City Hall and aren't tied to politicians who reside there though these commissioners are becoming more scarce thanks to the passage of Measure GG which mandated ward represention on the city's boards and commissions as well as other political factors.

Contrast Hubbard with another new commissioner Steve Simpson refused to cast a vote in the election on the first meeting in March because he was not familiar with either candidate, again because he hadn't attended a meeting yet. He had wanted to "see them in action" before making a final decision but wasn't given that opportunity so he abstained.

If Davidson hadn't run for a chair position that he probably had a good idea he wouldn't serve out because of the pending change in his residency status, then Ward would have become the commission's chair and one thing is clear, Ward is probably the last commissioner on the panel that City Hall would want chairing the commission. And if you've seen Ward at commission meetings, you would quickly figure out why.

This year's election was really the only odd election in a string of elections played out involving the CPRC in its seven years. But you certainly can't blame that on Gardner.


Did this happen when Gardner was on the commission? Did it happen when he was chairing the commission? Did it happen when he was on the dais for that matter?


There are more issues that the CPRC faced in the past 18 months or so that could be addressed and they will be in the series of postings involving the CPRC report card. The performance of commissioners past and present will be addressed in future postings.

However, to blame Gardner for the commission's problems makes no sense, except to try to gain political points during an election year and it's offensive that someone would use the situation involving the CPRC during the past year to elevate the standing of a councilman who himself has had nothing to say about actions taken by his own direct employees regarding the CPRC, not to mention directives issued by other elected officials on the dais to these direct employees regarding the CPRC.

There's been some finger pointing at the travesty involving the CPRC and I guess this is one way of doing that but before Betro points fingers elsewhere, he needs to point one straight at himself. Why? Because unlike Gardner, Betro is a councilman, one of seven who are in charge of hiring and firing three direct employees including both the city manager and the city attorney. Both of these employees have directed actions impacting the CPRC during the past 18 or so months that have been detrimental. Did they do them of their own accord as part of their job responsibilities or were they directed to do them? And if so, by who?

And did others knowing full well what was transpiring choose to use it to their own political advantage?

Thanks to some recent information on the matter, exactly what happened is starting to emerge most importantly during some actions taken the month of July, a month where many people in Riverside including those at City Hall are out of town. One thing, it's certainly not pretty but then little has been pretty in relation to the CPCR and its relationship with City Hall for a while now.

In the past year, under City Manager Brad Hudson's watch with the blessing of the city council, the CPRC has become pretty hamstrung, with one employee abruptly resigning and five commissioners also departing, all during a nine month period when Gardner is not on the commission let alone chairing it.

The CPRC has had its ability to perform nearly all of its charter powers, from doing community outreach to investigating officer-involved deaths undermined or challenged by who? Gardner? He's not even on the commission. When he was and when he was chairing it, the commission was allowed to do these tasks. Were they done as well as they could have been done? Probably not, but compared to what has transpired this year, a much better grade could be assigned.


In the past year, there were allegedly plans to delay, impede or even stop the commission from investigating officer-involved deaths and outreach reached a virtual standstill. Not during Gardner's tenure, but during Hudson's and by extension, during the tenures of the council members who employ him. If community members had not pressed Hudson on both of these issues, would these investigations or community outreach been returned to the executive manager and the commission? The community leadership as well as advocates for civilian review did an important thing.

It's difficult to say, but there was some redaction of these actions after community leaders complained. Whether that is truly correct remains to be seen and will be shown in large part by the job performances of both Executive Manager Kevin Rogan and the commissioners.

But the commission was hamstrung in other areas as well.

In fact, the commission is even tightly controlled in terms of how it conducts its own meetings in public and for all the city residents know, in private as well. How much so became clear earlier this year in a public forum.

In fact, the CPRC can't even approve an item for its own meeting agenda unless it's been cleared by both offices first. This is what both Ward and Simpson discovered first hand and guess what, only one of them is still serving on this body after trying to put an item on the agenda that was vetoed by City Hall.

Ward was thwarted by the city manager's and city attorney's office when he tried to place items on meeting agendas in early 2007 to discuss events impacting the CPRC surrounding meetings that took place between the city's list of "stake holders" at City Hall in 2006. It took several meetings for that discussion to take place.


Simpson learned his lesson when he tried to put an item on the agenda for the commission to discuss retaining independent counsel. The city attorney's office blocked that one stating it wasn't germane or under the purview of the CPRC even though there was past precedent for discussing and even exercising the option of retaining independent counsel in the autumn of 2004 surrounding the issuance of a subpoena to a police officer to appear before the board.

All that is known is that vetoing that particular agenda item wasn't the city attorney office's idea.

Does Gardner play a role in this? Is he on the commission? Is he chairing the commission? Is he on the dais at the time this is all playing out?

No, but Betro is and remember, he along with his colleagues acted towards Hudson by giving him a huge pay raise. When it comes to endorsing the actions of a direct employee, it doesn't get more direct than that.

To be a watch dog, the serious kind not the fun kind, you can not affiliate yourself with any particular political candidate. Betro and Gardner both have their followings and their campaigns. They both have their accomplishments and their mistakes, including with the CPRC. The difference is that Betro's inaction and total public silence with the CPRC during the past 18 months has had a much more detrimental impact on the current state of the CPRC than anything Gardner could have possibly done during his years chairing it. And anybody who implies otherwise should be ashamed of themselves and take a closer look at what has been happening at City Hall and its relationship to the commission.

The nadir of the CPRC so far in its tenure has been the questionable behind-the-scenes behavior at City Hall surrounding the sudden resignation of Simpson and the city's refusal to allow a discussion on the issue of independent counsel for the CPRC. Anything else that happens might be a step up at this point.


So is Gardner truly to blame? Did he try to shut down any dialogue on the issue of independent counsel?

As far as I know, Gardner is not an elected official and in a strange way, the better of a political candidate he is, the less his chances of winning election actually are because he can push for elected officials to do what they should have done all along but he can't make the changes himself and he can't get credit for them when compared with a city council vote. That's the incumbent's advantage.

Again, Gardner does not sit on the dais and make decisions like voting a tremendous pay raise to a city manager whose actions involving the CPRC have been viewed by many who advocate it as detrimental to the CPRC. Columnist Dan Bernstein called all seven members of the city council out on voting a pay raise after what he called the "hollowing out" of the CPRC by the city manager's office. This pay raise came not long after former executive manager, Pedro Payne tendered his "resignation" from that position.

Here, Bernstein criticized an earlier decision by that office to ban Payne from attending community meetings. Still, perhaps because that office can promise the city council members their wish list of items for their wards complete with marquee signs with their names in big letters like they are opening up a Broadway play, that's enough both to merit the raise and to merit them looking the other way at actions taken against the CPRC and shrug their shoulders to their supporters about how they can't do or say anything about it. But does the city manager's office act on its own or does it receive orders from those who staff it?



Have I always agreed with Gardner's actions, comments or decisions? No. Have I ever criticized Gardner? Yes, many times. I also realize that he worked very hard for the commission, spent many hours working on it especially as its chair and that at least during his tenure, there was scant criticism about how his performance as a commissioner or a chair from anyone besides me. Certainly at the public meetings which the CPRC holds at least 12 times annually this concern could have been raised but it hasn't been, though many concerns about the CPRC have been raised through the years most especially in the past 12 months since Riverside County began sending its management employees to town.

And no, complaining about an individual in private meetings behind closed doors while certainly compelling stuff doesn't count in terms of providing a person with valid grounds to blame an individual for something after the fact. If that happened, the communities who look to the CPRC to perform a critical function for them were not privy to these criticisms or discussions but they often do experience the consequences of their outcomes.



The problem is that if these sessions take place, those conducting them behind a veil of secrecy whether at City Hall or a local restaurant including but not exclusively Sire's restaurant believe that they actually are serving communities or representing them. It's too bad they don't feel like cluing the communities on to what they're doing especially those they purport to represent. However, this comment is more of a general one, and the more specific topic is the CPRC and the insinuations that have been going around that it sunk because of actions taken by Gardner as its chair.



Bill Howe, the CPRC's first chair, was the best one so far, but Gardner's is probably next in line behind him. Is he being compared to Pearcy who seems to be more interested in delivering the city manager's messages to the commissioners than vice versa as alleged by former commissioner, Steve Simpson through his description of actions taken against him by individuals on the Seventh floor of City Hall during July?



At any rate, hopefully this nonsense as it is will stop or at least those running for city council who support the CPRC will provide more detailed explanations at exactly how they have done so. For Betro, this includes the last two years.

That might produce compelling stuff indeed for any debate.




Inside Riverside takes on its second favorite topic, the Press Enterprise and the coverage given by its editorial board of the controversial appointment of Stanley Sniff into the sheriff's position vacated by the man who fired him last year.



The Los Angeles Times did this article on Sniff here, including his ill-fated run for sheriff all the way back in 1982.



Debates continued at California Baptist University, this time involving candidates from Ward Five and Ward Seven sparring off on the issues, according to the Press Enterprise.

Unlike in some of the other wards, the BASS quartet couldn't decide who to back in Ward Five, with outgoing Councilman Ed Adkison backing Chris MacArthur and his former BFF, Frank Schiavone backing Donna Doty-Michaulka. For those at City Hall who have said that one can't make a decision without the other, this represents a serious break in that so-called pattern but often city council appears to be like junior high school and one of those ways is how quickly some elected officials change their BFFs.

At any rate, MacArthur who it appears actually does have a stance on issues outside of whether or not to mud sling and Doty-Michaulka whose ties to Altura Credit Union have worried some did provide some information about themselves.


(excerpt)


MacArthur said dealing with traffic congestion and noise created by growth and trains passing through Riverside are among his top priorities. He pledged to make City Hall more proactive on traffic issues.

"I think we need to get the traffic engineer out there and get something done," MacArthur said. "We need to get out and knock on doors. We need community meetings. ... That's good government."

Michalka promised to work to obtain state and federal funding to better equip firefighters and police officers and called for more code-enforcement officers to prevent properties from deteriorating.

She also called for replacing plans for high-density housing with high-quality retail and office developments to lessen traffic. Riverside also needs to speed up plans to improve rail crossings with underpasses or overpasses, Michalka said.


In the second act, incumbent Steve Adams from Ward Seven and challenger and former mayor, Terry Frizzel were up on deck. The big issues were traffic, redevelopment and graffiti.


(excerpt)


Adams touted his accomplishments, including resurfacing streets, removing zoning for apartments, reducing crime and creating a redevelopment project to fund needed improvements within the ward.

More work is needed in reducing graffiti and tagging, he said.

The city has put together a task force that issues fines to families of juveniles caught tagging, he said.

"We've collected nearly $50,000. We're getting a grasp on the issue," Adams said.

Frizzel said the city has failed to prepare for all the growth, either in improving roads or increasing services over the years. Now, she said, the city is going to incur debts with the Riverside Renaissance program, an effort to build $1.2 billion in capital improvements within five years.

The Riverside Renaissance program "isn't the best thing to happen," Frizzel said.



Adams' comments about the thousands of dollars the city has collected in civil actions against the parents of those who do graffiti is very puzzling because I had asked an employee of the city attorney's office of Riverside how much money was collected and whether the police department's investigative budget was being repaid for conducting what are essentially civil investigations. The person I spoke with said that the city actually had collected very little money because the parents couldn't afford the fines and that in the majority of cases, the city had put property liens and had reported the civil actions to the national credit bureaus instead.

Strange that Adams' on television and at a debate makes it appeared as if this program is a cash cow when it's not. Maybe if they focused some of their enforcement efforts on the adults doing it including those reported in the Arlington and Green Belt areas by some residents, rather than just the minors.




It's ironic given the lack of newly proposed affordable housing for low-income residents in the downtown area that the city is selling three boarded up historic homes for a buck apiece to who else, but two development firms, according to the Press Enterprise.

Both MFR Development LLC and Mark Rubin who line the campaigns of several key elected officials will be moving the houses to a location to rehab them at some expense, but it's not just the house they purchased, it's the rather lucrative land that the houses sat on so despite the arduous expense involved with fixing up old houses, they are making out quite well as out-of-town development firms usually do in that part of Riverside.

How about rewarding the city's generosity by putting in some low-income housing in the spots where those houses proudly stood? You know, like they have promised to do at the spot where the Kawa Market stood, before being bulldozed into the halls of memory lane.