
Anybody can juggle one orange.
It’s not easy to look like you’re taking responsibility for some screw up or other when in reality you’re trying to spin as fast as you can to avoid accountability. But that’s exactly what seasoned bureaucrats do, and that’s precisely what County CEO Tom Mauk is up to now. It’s same old song: mistakes were made (passive voice, no subject of sentence), but corrective action is being implemented.
I have gotten hold of Mauk’s report to the Board of Supervisors about the massive fiasco in the County’s acquisition of the money pit at 433 West Civic Center – at the behest of the other Tom, County Clerk Tom Daly.
The 50’s and 60’s dates for the construction of this building, and its locations, makes me wonder if it was the epiecnter of the County corruption of the 1970’s. The offices of Dr. Cella, who at one time controlled the majority of the Board of Supervisors and was, I beliee, eventually convicted of Medi-Cal Fraud, may have been in this very building. It would be interesting to know who the seller of this property was and whether that seller had any linkage to that era of colorful county history.