.
.
.
The Council’s decision to put the minimum wage on the ballot now versus later was supposed to be a big deal. but hardly anyone was around in the few minutes before midnight when it happened. Kris Murray got the video she wanted of Mayor Tait finally lowering the boom on her while she claimed (absurdly) that he was hammering his gavel on democracy itself when she kept pushing to ask dilatory questions of the City Attorney in the waning minutes before midnight, by which hour a public hearing had to commence. It was “Fake Oppression” — I’m surprised that she didn’t squawk “‘Elp, Elp, I’m bein’ repressed!“ — but it will probably work in campaign videos, as most of the media won’t call bullshit on it. That’s what you get when — as is the case with Murray, your paid city staffer is a PR person rather than a policy person.
Anyway, Kris, the reason the Mayor doesn’t have to recognize you for just a brief “clarifying question” to the City Attorney — which will inevitably turn out to be your shoehorning in one last bit of lobbying for your side — is that you no longer have a shred of credibility remaining about what you will do when permitted to ask such a point of order or information at the end of a debate! The City’s meeting archives are freaking BRIMMING of your pulling this exact sort of stunt before, while the Mayor lets you get away with Lucy-ing his Charlie Brown time and again — and it will make a GREAT montage.
What the City effectively did, by approving something that had to be approved anyway— was to avoid holding another circus a month from now. The real conflict was about whether the City should fund a report on the economic consequences of the initiative … wait, no, that’s not quite it! What Disney and the Building Trades and other jackanapes want is NOT an impartial report, but a report summarizing all of the previous reports — because only the previous reports are biased pieces of suck. I offered, in public comment, to debate either Swill Spice or Blonde Robot Spice on the details of some of the City’s old reports — which, as I’ve noted previously, “suck” — and we’ll see if either of them take me up on it. The one I’d like to take on is the one that “proves” that a 4-star hotel (uhm, “hotel with 4-star amenities)” will boost Anaheim economically. I remember that I never got around to publishing the piece I was writing on it because it quickly became moot — but it was the kind of thing that would make any actual data analyst giggle until the onset of vomiting. Bring it on, Spice Councilwomen! I will bring with my my coterie of statisticians!
On its budget, the City postponed approval on some quality-of-life-related “impact fees” — which may or may not still leave it an imbalanced budget, it is not clear to me — as both staff and council members were too drained in the 1:00 hour to do justice to a proper debate. The council did agree to vote on “user fees,” which was not passed despite three aye votes. While the City Manager selection was on the closed session agenda — which is why your humble author stayed up past 1:25 a.m. to post first word on it — the Council apparently took no action, and none was reported.
In Council Communications at the end of the meeting — last five minutes of it, I’d say, if even that! — Councilman Vanderbilt asked for an item to be presented at the next meeting that would ask for the City Manager to hold or facilitate or invite — we’ll have to wait until the video is up to clarify — discussions with affected hoteliers about whether some compromise plan was possible, along the lines of the minimum wage plan in Los Angeles, and removing the City Manager as the final arbiter of disagreements of whatever kind. That would not prevent the current initiative for an increase from appearing on the ballot — but might well suck the air out of it. Nice surprise for the twelfth hour of meetings (including closed session) in a row! James, if you’ve got something like that up your sleeve, you really might want to be more sporting and broach the comment before Jimmy Kimmel goes off the air. A lawsuit-avoiding compromise might be useful — but it’s more likely to make the people who have put roughly a billion hours into this initiative hate you for blindsiding them. Brainy and compromisey as you may be, people love being derailed by those with zero skin in the game less than you might imagine.
More as it develops.
Update: Here’s what the LA Times’s view of the story was before Vanderbilt’s closing comments, which don’t yet seem to have been noticed.
“The City’s meeting archives are freaking BRIMMING of your pulling this exact sort of stunt before, while the Mayor lets you get away with Lucy-ing his Charlie Brown time and again, and it will make a GREAT montage.”
It MIGHT be made into a ‘GREAT montage’ – if somebody culls through the video footage, cuts it, then produces it. That could take a while, and I don’t know who has the time, technical capability, motivation, and knowledge of the specific dates where this footage would arise in which to do it (except for her own PR staffers…). But if you had a list handy…this is a good idea…
“discussions with affected hoteliers about whether some compromise plan was possible, along the lines of the minimum wage plan in Los Angeles,”
Those discussions really need to happen in a hurry, and need to move forward, but on this one, I’d expect absolutist stances to dominate on each side. I have some problems with the ballot initiative’s wording, but they make me think the intent is to effect the best possible negotiated compromise at some point…fair enough: I don’t get to choose my side’s tactics in this fight, only how I help them achieve their eventual goal.
To me, the goal has to be ensuring that those who extract subsidies from the public are forced to disgorge the benefits of those subsidies back to the public, rather than pocketing them as profits. Which public? How? And all the rest are all secondary concerns that must wait until the principle itself is secured.
Pretty fair reading, except that it’s not so much about “disgorging negotiated benefits” (or you might be asking for a lawsuit) as about exactly what it says it’s about — not allowing people to use public benefits to pay starving workers starving wages.
(Note to the robot: “starving need not mean literally “experiencing somatic deterioration due to lack of any food intake.” Don’t bother with that.)
(Note to Donovan: she’d *absolutely* make such an argument.)
“not allowing people to use public benefits to pay starving workers starving wages.”
Well, ultimately, I do care about starving and homeless workers…but on this one, my logic is more, “To those for whom much has been given, much will be expected of them.” There must be a very special obligation that falls upon those who receive money from the city, so that others will never seek or obtain subsidies unless there’s a unique opportunity that is worth putting up with all the strings that must be attached. Moral hazard arises unless this happens.
Pay your workers/families a living wage, Orange County. . Just do it.
# Laura Ingraham Summer Camp