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Trolls, monsters, scary pranksters … dark tales whispered. Villagers nervously huddled together, while screams and curses bellow out through the late night hours…it must be… just another routine boring Council meeting during Election season in Costa Mesa!
Every city gets its fair share of craziness during election season, but in Costa Mesa the line between reality and make-believe gets blurrier and blurrier.
Throughout the Righeimer regime we residents have suffered through an barrage of vitriol and propaganda. We residents, are constantly reminded that we can’t have nice things like other cities do. We can’t have a police force or fire stations with working air conditioners, because we have an “unfunded pension liability.” But here, let’s spend $650K for lights in a dawn-to-dusk park, close to a million on a 3-day party (which nobody attended) and $400K for a recently renovated median (in front of Righeimers’ house, which he just decided they needed to re-do again), and that’s just a sampling of the ludicrous spending habits. Oh, and about that infrastructure…new curbs for everybody!!!
But, sorry, you can’t have police – they cost too much.
So, when the above illustration recently ran in the local Daily Pilot (well, it was actually a paid ad, the paper didn’t just “run” it), I was a little shocked to see a visual of exactly how much Costa Mesa has lost in public safety services from just one department. All those little red X’s represent an estimated $4 million a year savings for employment costs to the city. But no other city in the county, when blessed with increasing revenues and rising property values, has taken the seriously monstrous steps Costa Mesa has, led by Jim Righeimer.
But hey – did I mention we got new curbs?
These reprobates sitting in City Hall have also insidiously corrupted our quality of information. The hiring of former Daily Pilot Editor William Lobdell as City spokesman (or as we call him, “Head of Ministry of Truth”) has turned our local daily independent paper into a PR mechanism for the City. Just recently a local piece ran, touting the City as having a $6 million dollar surplus. The claims made in the paper were nothing more than repeating misleading misrepresentations sent out by the PR apparatus of the City.
These “facts” were never investigated. That one story led our very own uber-knowledgable La Femme Wonkita, to pen this tome entitled “Financial Fantasies?” In Wonkita’s world, one doesn’t just swallow the spoonfuls of pablum, the pablum gets examined and analyzed. Wonkita goes to the source. In this case she chose, “What do the City’s audited financial statements say?” Well, they paint a very different financial picture than that painted by a crass career politician like Righeimer, trying to get re-elected. Her conculsion was that the auditors and Righiemer tell two different versions of financial reality. She chooses to believe the auditors.
Sadly, the Daily Pilot continues to just print whatever the government feeds it without ever questioning or resourcing the facts. That’s assuming that the City would even release the facts.
ONE local activist resident has been suffering under the systematic refusal of access to public documents. The City in this case has chosen to say “NO” to the wrong person. Anna Vrska is not your average watchdog, or council gadfly. She listens. She asks questions. She waits patiently for the answers and then waits for the proper documentation to back up the claims made by the city. In many cases, those documents have been redacted to the point that they are almost unreadable. Still she persists. One question being answered led to more questions needing to be asked.
One obstacle kept recurring: the obstruction by the outsourced cadre of hired gun attorneys. At almost every turn, another attorney was managing some minor administrative duty that is unheard of in most other city’s. While other cities naturally respect the residents right to the public documents (after all, they are paid for using public monies) in Costa Mesa our tax dollars were being used to hire high priced legal firms to review every single public document request made at the city clerks office.
This led Anna to begin to question, just how much was the City spending on Legal fees? Her findings were shocking. Her attempts at having the Daily Pilot print or write about her story were thwarted. Her “following the money” makes the following piece a must read for any Costa Mesa voter. Read this and take at glimpse at the “Shell Game” they are playing with the depleted fund reserves. Depleted Reserves vs. Phony Surpluses. The financial schemes at the City of Costa Mesa should be aptly named “all Tricks, no Treat”
I’ll let Anna’s words and research speak for themselves. Ladies and Gentleman, Anna Vrska.
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A recent City press release touts Costa Mesa’s $6 million surplus. At City Council meetings I often hear Mayor James Righeimer describe Costa Mesa as “thriving.” I’d characterize my beloved city more as precariously perched on a precipice. The many reasons include the City’s rising legal expenses, depletion of the Internal Service Funds and the expanding role of contracted City Attorneys.
Skyrocketing Legal Expenses
Since 2010, the year Righeimer took office, the City’s legal expenses skyrocketed from $1.3 million to $2.84, $2.33, and $2.72 million each subsequent year. These figures are particularly worrisome considering the City spent $737,383 on attorneys the year the role was outsourced (’05-’06), and through 2010 legal fees averaged $1 million. Even before outsourcing, the average was $1.5 million per year, and no annual legal expenditure was higher than $1.88 million.
Further, it’s frightening to consider that there is no indication of this trend slowing.
Depletion of the Internal Service Funds
Where is the money for legal fees coming from? Per the City’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), a portion comes from the General Fund (under City Attorney) and the rest comes out of the Self Insurance Fund (along with the Equipment Replacement Fund part of the Internal Service Funds).
| Fiscal Year (July-June) | General Fund – City Attorney (actual) | Self Insurance Fund – Legal Expense | Total Legal Expense |
| 2013-14 | figures not released | figures not released | $2.72 million |
| 2012-13 | $1.04 million | $1.29 million | $1.33 million |
| 2011-12 | $.956 million | $1.88 million | $2.84 million |
| 2010-11 | $.854 million | $.446 million | $1.3 million |
| 2009-10 | $.405 million | $.495 million | $.09 million |
| 2008-09 | $.448 million | $.712 million | $1.16 million |
However, because the General Fund can’t keep pace with the recent increase in legal expenses, the Internal Service Funds (ISF) have been depleted. Also, since expenditure details for the Self Insurance Fund are not broken out, it impossible for residents to know what the City is spending on legal fees and how much is actually coming out of that fund.* This accounting is misleading and millions of dollars of expenditure without details makes me uncomfortable.
I estimate that over the last three fiscal years $4.5 million from the Self Insurance Fund has been used for legal fees, and the ISF totals have dropped from $12.61 million in ’08-’09 to $4.27 million in ’12-’13. For perspective, since 2001 the ISF has averaged $12-$14 million and didn’t dip much below $10 million until ’10-’11 – again after the Mayor took office. It is also interesting to note that the Self Insurance Fund has been in the red for multiple years, but alarmingly so the last several. And the numbers for fiscal year ’13-’14 are not even in yet!
As long as funds meant for insurance are being surreptitiously depleted, I cannot consider my City thriving. I often wonder about the true financial health of our City?
| Fiscal Year (July-June) | Equipment Replacement Fund | Self Insurance Fund | Internal Services Funds (ISF) Total |
| 2013-14 | figures not released | figures not released | figures not released |
| 2012-13 | $10.18 million | ($5.91) million | $4.27 million |
| 2011-12 | $10.28 million | ($3.11) million | $7.17 million |
| 2010-11 | $9.53 million | ($2.47) million | $7.07 million |
| 2009-10 | $12.12 million | ($2.90) million | $9.21 million |
| 2008-09 | $13.95 million | ($1.35) million | $12.61 million |
I further venture that the Self Insurance Fund may have been improperly used (and abused) the last few fiscal years. Internal Service Funds are used to account for the financing of goods and services provided by the one City department to others, or of other governmental units on a cost-reimbursement basis. As the City Attorney is an outsourced entity and not a City department per se, this matter should be further examined. **
Furthermore, as the Self Insurance Fund is established to account for the receipt and disbursement of funds used to pay worker’s compensation, general liability and unemployment claims filed against the City, I think it is stretching the definition to use it for paying millions of dollars in litigation costs. ***
Expanding Role of City Attorneys
In July 2014 Jones & Mayer billed the city $157,675: The equivalent of five full-time attorneys, each working 22 complete days at the rate of $177 per hour. In contrast, Jones & Mayer billed $69,176 in July 2006 – an increase of 128% in eight years. What accounts for this in a city the size of Costa Mesa? Why do we need five full time City Attorneys plus an additional eight firms? What were “we” spending so much money on?
The current City Council majority, and specifically the Mayor’s, callous attitude of ‘my way or the highway’ make fertile ground for lawsuits. The CMCEA litigation alone cost the City $1.94 million (Jones Day billing at $495 per hour!) Even with that lawsuit nearing conclusion, legal spending runs rampant.
One reason is the expanding role of City Attorneys. Through my work on the Fairview Park Citizens Advisory Committee, and in my experience with public record requests, I repeatedly witnessed City Attorneys doing administrative tasks unrelated to legal issues.
Jones & Mayer, not the City, hired Zamucen and Curren, LLP to review the financials after the 60th celebration. Every public record request is reviewed by a City Attorney, even though the City’s website states that sometimes some requests are reviewed by City staff. And the list continues …
What Checks and Balances?
In this orgy of legal spending, who’s keeping tabs? Who is overseeing the quality of attorney work? Per the Jones & Mayer contract an annual review of City Attorneys is supposed to be performed, but the last time one was done was in 2008. If attorneys and their work aren’t consistently evaluated, how do we know we are getting good service and value?
Who is making sure the City is accurately billed? I’ve been informed by the City that City Attorney Tom Duarte checks the invoices and City Manager Tom Hatch signs off on them. I wonder if this is enough. Over the last three fiscal years monthly legal bills averaged $219,000. That’s a lot of legal work to be familiar with to adequately determine if billing is appropriate and correct. It seems billing inaccuracies could slip through the cracks.
Not that residents have any good way of finding out one way or another. From personal experience I know how difficult it is to get documentation, especially specifics regarding legal billing. Numerous times I’ve been denied documents on the basis of privilege, but I fail to see how the date work was performed, amount of time the task took, and attorney who performed the work, is privileged information.
Another troubling aspect is that the City’s out-sourced attorney, Jones & Mayer, are responsible for overseeing all other out-sourced firms. So, in effect, we are paying Jones & Mayer to administrate at their legal rates, and also do something counter to logic.
Geoff West, author of A Bubbling Cauldron, captured the sentiment aptly in an October 2011 entry.
“As I contemplate that particular relationship – with an outsourced contractor overseeing another outsourced contractor – I find myself thinking this may be just the kind of complication some outsourcing arrangements bring to us. Why would a private firm – who makes their money billing for every breath they take on their client’s behalf – suggest putting a ceiling on fees for another firm? It would seem to serve their interests, but not necessarily the City’s interests, if that pot of gold remains uncapped.”
This precisely illuminates my worry concerning the (perhaps unsupervised and out of control) burgeoning legal expenses of the last few fiscal years.
Jones & Mayer billing increased from $636,108 in fiscal year ’05-’06 to $1.77 million in fiscal year ’13-‘14 (almost tripled in eight years!). As an outsourced company with an at-will contract, and ever increasing billing, what incentive does the City Attorney have to do what’s best for the residents as opposed the iron will of the City Council majority?
So what do we currently have in Costa Mesa? An attorney-happy City Council majority, an outsourced City Attorney (and eight additional law firms) with no incentive to curb legal costs, and ‘no checks and balances’ process including resident access to relevant attorney billing documents. It’s a recipe for disaster.
I don’t buy Mayor Righeimer’s rosy words about how well Costa Mesa is doing. He’s gotten us in this mess and I know I’ll be thinking about the burgeoning legal expenses and accompanying issues in the upcoming election. It is something we all need to monitor so we come off the precipice and move toward thriving. Jay Humphrey and Katrina Foley can help guide us in that direction.
*My calculations – total legal expenditure for a fiscal year minus the actual from the General Fund under City Attorney equals the amount taken from the Self Insurance Fund.
**On the City’s website the City Attorney is delineated as a department. By definition a department is a part of a whole and an outsourced entity does not fut that definition. In my examination of 27 OC cities, none that outsource their attorney put them on their City’s website as a City department.
***No comma after general liability would indicate it refers to general liability claims not general liability.
Hey Geri,
I’ll see you your depleted Internal Services Fund, and raise sixty million in wasted design fees for park that never bot built.
Wanna trade?
Jolly good, let’s just leave out the part about the employee association lawsuit that is one of the main drivers for legal expenses, or the fact that that same employee association has not dropped said lawsuit even though they just signed a new contract with the city!
Up is down, down is up, keep at it, “watchdogs” and make sure never to stray off the anti-Council, pro-Union script, your “friends” may not talk to you anymore if you do…
Let’s see…one of the council majority is always saying “up is down and down is up.” Hmmm, must be a business practice.
It’s a line – I dunno, maybe it’s a common line – but the thug Eddie Dane says it sarcastically, in the back of a car, to Gabriel Byrne’s Tom Regan character, as he plans to execute him, in the Coen Brothers’ greatest film Millers Crossing. Does Mensinger admire Eddie Dane?
Oh Party Line,…..that was one of the lawsuits,(which could easily have been avoided), but that one’s winding down, I’d also like to point out that the city has lost every motion in that case. …explain the other eight law firms. Did you actually read all of it?
Or were you just not straying off your “anti” labor script?
Sorry for changing the subject somewhat.
Do you consider city managers’ and executives’ associations to be part of “labor”?
So, Party Line, I find it amusing and interesting that you parrot the exact words uttered by Mayor Pro Tem Steve Mensinger at the last council meeting – Up is down and down is up. Could that be you hiding behind that pen name, Steve?
And Gericault is correct – that lawsuit is the DIRECT result of what turned out to be an illegal move by Righeimer and his council majority. The ironic thing is, most of what he said he wanted to accomplish would probably have been done if had just not violated the city policy. Then, again, as Forrest Gump so wisely said, “Stupid is as stupid does”.
Great job by Gericault and the tenacious Anna Vrska. Thanks to the OJ for providing a platform for them.
*Yeah Lt., those boyz in charge in CM are a gaggle of giggles aren’t they? It shows how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The term Representative Government comes to mind. “Where might that be?” Hopefully,
Katrina will get the nod and maybe….just maybe …..things will change for better.
I’m not sure what I detest more, the douchebaggery of the council, or the enrichening of the utterly worthless Oscar & Mayer.
I for one m glad the police force is losing members. I have yet to see a situation that cops cannot make worse.
The rest of the items I’m sure are important but I am not familiar with them enough to comment on them.
Kafka would be drooling over this city’s surreal shenanigans. The citizens have been very patient indeed waiting for a day of reckoning ie Election Day for this apparently irrational unstable person to exit the council. Should he remain, serious consideration should be given to removal for malfeasance, and perhaps misconduct. Isn’t there one attorney interested in saving the city who could take a a pro bono case to get this bum and his toadies out
Great information which needed to be told. Lots of passion from Gericault. Lots of hard work and tenacity on the part of Anna Vrska.
My only problem with this piece is the bad rap it gives the Daily Pilot. In my opinion, it was completely unwarranted and unnecessary. The editors of that fine local newspaper – our newspaper of record for more than a century – walk a fine line, presenting the facts of issues while avoiding editorial comment and partisanship. Not an easy task in such a contentious political environment that is Costa Mesa today. It has been said that a newspaper does it’s job if both sides are mad at it… I suspect the Daily Pilot has accomplished that goal.
So, kudos to Gericault and Anna Vrska. This piece will certainly rattle a few cages in Costa Mesa – I can hear heads exploding in Mesa Verde… 🙂
This has become a disturbing pattern with our “fourth estate” in Costa Mesa. It’s not the first time the DP has played a patsy in the PR campaign games. The incestuous relationship that currently exist between Costa Mesa spokesman Lobdell and the DP isn’t “new”, it just isn’t ever ever mentioned.
The printing of City press releases regarding “surpluses” is printed without any checks or background checks at all. When a resident sends a “commentary” with fully sourced documentation , it is set on the back burner. The reasons being given is that it needs to be double checked, (even though all the facts were “documented” from city sources). Yet, when you have layers of hired city attorneys stalling the process, what then?
The DP had this story since mid-August, yet they did nothing. Anna asked them to print her commentary by the end of Sept. The DP did nothing. It’s Oct 14th. Ballots are being sent back. Yet , on this very important issue affecting the voters, there has been nothing in print.
This article is about the depletion of City Reserve funds, the funneling of those funds to pay for excessive legal fees, and the runaway checks and balances that has no one minding the store. The fact that the DP dragged it’s feet and didn’t do it’s “job” because its an election season is secondary.
Lets talk about what Anna said……The Daily Pilot will just have to deal with their “image” another day.
Gericault, my friend, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on the Daily Pilot issue. It’s a sad reality of life today that our friends in the print media are struggling to do more with less. To say “nobody reads print anymore” would be an overstatement, but the fact is that many folks get their “information” from an electronic source these days. I know the folks at the Pilot do the best job they can under the circumstances. I know that folks on both sides of the political equation are unhappy when news is presented factually, but tilts to one side or the other because that’s where the FACTS take them.
No question that Anna did an amazing job over many weeks, but the Daily Pilot is held to a higher standard than those of us who blog are. They MUST verify the information. Yeah, they publish the guts of press releases, but so do I. Yeah, you question the information on the budget surplus. Well, you can’t argue with the numbers, but can certainly debate how they got there. That budget surplus is directly related to their staff shortages, not only in the Police Department, but city-wide. They have more vacancies than at any time during the past quarter-century – a huge mountain to climb. In the meantime, those budgeted positions go unfilled and budget surpluses result.
I think you unnecessarily, unfairly mischaracterized the Daily Pilot in your piece. That’s my view, for whatever it’s worth.
*Great one…..anyone can buy a T-Shirt that promotes Pension Responsibility. Anyone can take from the poor and give to the rich. Anyone who is more power crazed than patriotic will do things that exhibit their so-called power. This happens in the press, on blogs and even with electeds……. Politricks are neither pure nor fair…….they just are. We like Canalis…..he seems fair to a degree, but unless people put his feet to the fire….you can simply follow the trail of sponsors on the preceeding pages……before the Public Comments.
Some stuff I submitted to the Daily Pilot on the 11th. Carefully kept it to 700 words. Four days, no acknowledgement, so I feel free to hand it off to you.
Why I choose Jim Righeimer.
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/choose: “choose” here is according to the fourth definition: “I’ll choose you to see who gets to bat first.”)
I choose Jim for many reasons. Some are meaningful for many of us. Here are a few:
The outsourcing plan: Jim obviously spent lots of time on this one – I’d estimate maybe almost fifteen minutes. When it got to the nasty court system, it was quashed by some activist judge, who had to spend much more time on it than Jim did. I wanted to choose Jim on this one, but didn’t.
The layoff notices: a true leader in these United States has to be able to make tough decisions. Sometimes he even has to make life-or-death decisions. The two hundred layoff notices belong in this category. Jim must have simply agonized, probably for more than twenty minutes, over this one. Layoff notices threaten people’s livelihood by depriving them of jobs. Jim’s was a tough decision. And the life-or-death aspect of it was real: look at Huy Pham’s suicide. It also got a lot of people to leave city employment before Jim’s council rescinded all those notices. I chose Jim several times on this subject.
The unfunded pension liability: Wow! Even though he can do nothing concrete on this front, Jim’s brought it to everyone’s attention, slinging blame for the situation left, right, and center. We’ve now heard that Katrina Foley is solely responsible for the situation, despite that ex-mayors Bever and Monahan participated in the decision. I chose Jim once or twice on this one.
A true leader involves himself in making new law, or even changing the law of the land. Jim has done this very effectively, by splitting the public comments section of the City Council agenda. First Amendment rights? What First Amendment rights? Where does it say that freedom of speech includes the right to be HEARD? From reading his Constitution and talking to patrons at Monahan’s pub, Jim knows that the First Amendment only includes the right to SPEAK. So any act that helps him ignore such blather only improves council efficiency. I chose Jim on at least a couple of occasions for this one.
“An honest politician stays bought.” This cynical statement doesn’t apply here because Jim is not a politician. Autocrat, yes; but politics means getting others to see your point of view, and Jim has never tried that tactic. Honest doesn’t apply either; Jim, on January 7, 2014, at 30:24 into the video, made the statement, “Um, just a point of, of clarification, our police department is fully funded, we are looking to hire people that we need, we are not understaffed, we are fine with that issue there. The people that are here are, are, excuse me, people that are here are reserve officers, they’re not the full time officers, they’re here they’re reserve, and I’ll leave it up to the chief to decide how many officers need to be here.” The following Friday Jim admitted that he “misspoke”. He was talking about a staffing level of something like ninety-eight police, out of a recommended level closer to one hundred forty. I chose him several times for this one.
I chose Jim several times over his lawsuit against the Costa Mesa Police Officers’ association. His lawsuit shows how seriously the nystagmus test administered by Officer Bao has affected him. How bad-off must a man be, to assert in a court of law that he has been severely mentally deranged by an action that leaves ordinary citizens entirely unaffected? I chose him in several three-minute comments, and in song.
I chose Jim over his fairytale of a 2012 charter, which was rejected overwhelmingly. We have an even more bizarre piece of fantasy coming in Measure O, which lets fines, zoning, budget, and even eminent domain be determined by the swing vote of a single council seat. Allan Mansoor in 2002 was put into that very council seat by fewer than thirteen percent of the registered voters, and we are still paying his bills. I choose Jim over Measure O, and I hope the entire electorate does as well.
Jim should stand or fall along with this idiocy.
The typo in the legal fees chart makes the City look thrifty. The Total Legal Expense for 2012-13 should be $2.33 million, not $1.33 million.
Where’s your source for that #2.33 million figure, just in case (the very likely case) that someone asks?
Here you go:http://www.costamesaca.gov/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=15667
Gracias, jefe.