Take two aspirins and call me in the morning...
Well, no that’s not quite right. Headache would imply that County Clerk Tom Daly cares he blew $2,100,000 of public money on a real estate venture and that it could cost another $7,600,000 to fix the problem; or that he is in any way worried about it. And why should he be? When there’s no accountability you never even have to say you’re sorry.
Here’s the background. In 2007 Daly urged the purchase of the small office building at 433 West Civic Center Drive, in Santa Ana. The ostensible purpose of this acquisition was the expansion of the County Archives.
Read the rest of “Tom Daly’s $10,000,000 Headache”
Two questions – who owned the building when the county bought it and how does the CEO, who is responsible to the Supervisors for all non-elected department heads, get off the hook for the county real estate staff having done such a flawed analysis? Daly should be assigned much of the blame, but the CEO should also (unless the Board simply ignored the CEO’s protestations on this one. Perhaps if we knew who the seller was and how politically connected that person or organization is that would explain a lot.
The building was owned by a guy named Mike Silva (a trust).
You are correct that the CEO should be blamed – Hell he should be fired for misleading the Board into thinking it was a good deal.
However I am perfectly confident that this deal originated in Daly’s office and that the talking point for the deal all came from Daly and his crack staff – sycophants and a former newspaper reporter.
As in all government bureaucracies the RDMD people and the CEO ultimately do what they’re told by the electeds- in this case Daly.Does this absolve them? No. But the fish rots from the head, as they say.