Saturday, December 31, 2011

A brief history of cancer


Remember this line?  “There is a cancer growing on the presidency.” It dates back to the Nixon presidency and the Watergate scandal.

Well, there has been a cancer growing on the City of Pacific. It was introduced about 10 years ago, and it has sapped the strength of the city and alienated it from its residents. The cancer is the public safety division.
Like most cancers, it wasn’t recognized for what it was until it had a firm grip on its host. But for the past 10 years it has dominated the life of a government that has been afraid of the surgery necessary to excise it. It grew, it thrived, and it has insinuated itself so thoroughly into the body of its host that its removal may prove uncomfortable, indeed. But it is time for this cancer to go.
In 2000, Howard Erickson was elected mayor after a bruising political fight in the city. After taking office, he fired the police chief, then introduced the concept of merging the police and fire departments into a public safety division as an economy measure. It proved to be anything but economical. The concept involved having a public safety director who would be both police and fire chief. The council agreed. It eliminated the position of police chief and created the position of public safety director. Two days after the filing period for that position closed, Mr. Erickson appointed John T. Calkins to the position. Without thoroughly vetting Mr. Calkins, the council approved.
Soon afterward, the folly became apparent.  A house caught fire and burned to the ground. Fire staff who should have been on hand to manage the response were out of state, driving a new fire truck back to the city. A hydrant that should have served the house was dry. In a subsequent city council meeting, Mr. Calkins showed up in a full dress fire uniform which he was not qualified to wear and, in front of TV cameras, yelled at Councilwoman Bernadine Harrison that she was a disgrace and should resign. Her offense – holding the public safety division to account for the debacle.
Mr. Calkins had essentially gone on record as being unaccountable to the city’s civilian authority. And the council allowed it.
Following the fire, Pacific hired a fire chief, thereby nullifying the savings that were supposed to occur by consolidating the police and fire chief positions.
10 years later, Pacific no longer has a fire department. But it still has a public safety director, who is paid more than $100,000 annually for doing half the job the position was created to perform. Due to financial constraints, some staff salaries have been cut, but the public safety director’s position is secure. The division continues to be a burden on the city’s coffers and staff. 

During the past 10 years, 
  • John Calkins failed a polygraph examination on whether he threatened a man with a handgun.

  • John Calkins was stopped for drunk driving. On the evening of his arrest he had worn to a public event a T-shirt celebrating police brutality during the Chicago Police Riots of 1968.
Note the statement:
"We kicked your father's ass,
now it's your turn."
  • Following the filing of vehicular assault charges against John Calkin's son, Mr. Calkins was investigated by the Sumner Police Department for tampering with one of the witnesses to the assault.
  • John Calkins sent officers for training on immigration enforcement, which is not the mission of the City of Pacific. The training took place in Arizona, with a department which recently was cited by a federal judge for racial profiling. Pacific’s racial profiling policies garnered poor media coverage and drew the attention of the Governor, who sent an emissary  to speak to the city council.
  • John Calkins violated federal civil rights law in trying to suppress a civil rights march protesting his racial profiling policies.
  • John Calkins was accused in at least one deposition of calling probationary employees into his office to view pornography on city time and on a city computer. One former employee has provided evidence that Mr. Calkins’ division provided a fraudulent document to a magistrate considering the termination of that employee and that the fraudulent document included a forgery.
  • In a memo released at a Public Safety Committee meeting, John Calkins disclosed that, due to budget constraints he was going to increase revenue for his division by instructing his officers to write more tickets. Improving public safety was not mentioned in the document.
  • Calkins continued to wear a police uniform he is not qualified to wear. He is a civilian.
  • When the city council called for an investigation into the improper use of a city credit card by Mayor Richard Hildreth, John Calkins helped the mayor by having his division ask the wrong questions.
  • During the most recent election campaign, a public safety police officer was sent to investigate a mayoral candidate who circulated an election flier that irritated Mayor Richard Hildreth.
  • During that same campaign, Mr. Calkins demonstrated his incompetence by sending out a news release exaggerating a residential burglary into a home invasion. This was clearly a bid to rally the community behind the mayor.  The news release– also circulated by Mayor Richard Hildreth – identified the neighborhood involved and disclosed that the victim was an elderly man who had kept large sums of money in his home. The news release provided information on how the home could be entered.

So our public safety division is headed by a screaming, incompetent, unethical, disrespectful racially profiling bully who is accused or requiring subordinates to view porn, and is being paid for a job that no longer exists.
The city council can’t claim this is the mayor’s problem. They can simply rewrite the ordinances, eliminating the position of public safety director, re-create the position of police chief, advertise the position for police chief,  and then confirm only a candidate with the best credentials and best reputation for that position. Or, they could enter into a contract with a competent government to provide public safety services. We are already doing that with the regional fire authority.
There is a cancer that has lodged itself in Pacific’s city government. Time for the city council to adopt a New Year's resolution: perform some radical surgery. The sooner, the better.

If they don't act to correct this situation, knowing what they have been told, perhaps it's time to start considering recall on the basis of misfeasance or nonfeasance. 

Next time: A Roadmap to Recall.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Mayor Richard Hildreth Damns His Own Legacy

Recent televised news reports and other sources show Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth, who was defeated by a write-in candidate in the November election, predicting that the new mayor, Cy Sun, will represent trouble for the city. Sun's own statements indicate this is true.

What Mr. Hildreth doesn't seem to get is that the election of Mr. Sun is a direct result of how Mr. Hildreth ran the city. People were dissatisfied enough with him to give him the boot and elect "Anybody but Rich." The chickens came home to roost, and Mr. Hildreth is, in effect, criticizing the fruits of his labor.

Robert Smith, member, Pacific City Council, 2002-2004.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

What Has Gotten Into Pacific’s Public Officials?

Americanism: When I was growing up, I totally embraced the concepts of what it meant to be an American. I still believe the ideas we were taught in childhood are close to sacred, and I think other Americans feel the same. American values are almost religious values, and they are matched by a sacred symbol (the Flag), a sacred oath (Pledge of Allegience) and sacred scrolls (the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

These are Articles of Faith for Americans. We believe that the people are king and elected officials are servants. But these ideas just aren’t honored in Pacific. I’d like to know why.


Here are some examples:
Defiance: In 2003, voters resoundedly cast city councilman Clint Steiger out of office. Shortly afterward, Members of that council thumbed their noses at the voters by immediately filling a vacancy with Mr. Steiger.

Church Raid: In 2005, the entire Pacific Police Department and Mayor Hildreth raided New Hope Lutheran Church to arrest a skateboarder. A police officer had detained the youth, then drove off to chase his companion. The youth crossed Third Avenue and joined a prayer dinner in the church’s parking lot. Skateboarding in the park is not an offense listed on the sign stating the park’s rules. Raiding a church event to detain someone for an activity not clearly prohibited by the park’s posted rules is an inexcusable display of bullying. The mayor has never apologized for the overkill.
Racial profiling: September, 2007: The Pacific Police Department had taken it upon themselves to enforce the 21st Century’s version of the Fugitive Slave Act. They would look at Latinos, determine they were suspicious because of their race and illegally detain and jail them. Even the governor protested the outrageous behavior. When people planned a protest march which is allowed under the Constitution, Mr. Calkins took on the demeanor of a southern red neck sheriff and talked about “outside agitators”. He and Mayor Richard Hildreth threatened to arrest anyone who marched, an action which seems to be a violation of federal criminal law intended to protect the rights of people to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. (18 USC 241. Conspiracy against rights) The right of free speech is sacred to Americans. Our forebearers risked their lives and their fortunes to obtain these rights. Mr. Calkins brought in police from other jurisdictions. He and the mayor only backed down after an American Civil Liberties Union attorney contacted the Pacific City Attorney.

Demeaning the public: When people address the city council, they have to run a one-man gauntlet—Mayor Hidreth, who makes a point of getting in the last word by either cutting speakers off or making dismissive comments when they are done. This is very disrespectful of the public and discourages people from speaking to the council. It is dominating behavior. The council has allowed the mayor to do this, and thus to filter the information that reaches them.

Police brutality: Fall 2008: At the time public safety director Calkins was arrested and charged with drunk driving, he was wearing a T-shirt that celebrated the night in 1968 when Chicago police rioted and committed crimes of violence against the public during the Democratic National Convention. The T-shirt carried the slogan, “We kicked your father’s ass, now it’s your turn.” Mr. Calkins was accused of trying to intimidate the officer who detained him for drunk driving. In a classic case of double standard, Mr. Hildreth went onto the World Wide Web to defend the chief, but the next day prohibited any discussion of the arrest at a city council meeting.

Defiance: I printed a T-shirt  that bore the photo of Mr. Calkins wearing his “kick your ass” message, and displayed it to the Pacific City Council to shame them into realizing what they tolerated. The response of Council Member Clint Steiger—the man voters had booted out of office—was to defiantly compliment Mr. Calkins for the fine likeness. This is similar to the attitude of the southern sheriff who was depicted in Life magazine as making jokes during an inquiry about the disappearance and brutal slaying of civil rights workers. My father was a Spokane policeman and learned from a Spokane attorney who traveled to the south that it appeared one of the dead men had been forced to leap from a crane. Mr. Steiger’s comment is different from that sheriff’s attitude only in degree. 

Tolerating unprofessional behavior: Spring 2010: Councilman James McMahon castigates me in an e-mail for producing the T-shirt. But he is silent about the appalling attitude reflected in Mr. Calkin’s garment—that  a police riot against citizens is something to display and celebrate. The message from Mr. McMahon: It’s OK for Pacific’s public safety director, on the night he is arrested for driving drunk, to attend a public sporting event while boldly displaying on his chest a message that police violence is OK. But it’s not OK for a member of the public to denounce that sort of attitude. What is really astonishing is that Mr. McMahon delivered this rebuke in a public document barely two months after he took office. His rebuke came at the same time an independent police agency was determining that Mr. Calkins most likely had been abusing his authority by, among other things, threatening an individual by brandishing a handgun.

Denial of union rights: At the time of my interchange with Mr. McMahon, a former policeman was testifying under oath that he was targeted by police management for termination after he was struck by a drunk driver, sustained serious injuries, and was unable to work. He testified that his department investigated him for his inability to work, and that his desire to speak to his union representative about that was treated as insubordination.Message: Don’t exercise your rights.

No appeal about porn: The same policeman testified that Mr. Calkins called him into his office to view pornography, including images of a women smoking a cigar with her vagina. When the city’s attorney asked him whether he reported this to anyone, he said he would have to complain to the individual showing the porn, Mr. Calkins, who worked for the mayor. In other words, there was no-one he could appeal to.

Humiliating the victim: When a woman of some standing in the community (for her service on a city commission) complained to police about a domestic assault against her, she felt the police had provided less than satisfactory help and said the same to the city council. In response Mr. Hildreth distributed to the council the police report, along with photos showing the woman’s bruised condition, further humiliating her. Police Department investigations can be somewhat controversial. In response to a City Council request that Mayor Hildreth’s misuse of a credit card be investigated, the Pacific Police Department investigated the wrong violation, resulting in the prosecutor declining to prosecute. Under these circumstances, Mayor Hildreth’s use of Pacific police department records to discredit a complaint against the department lacks credibility and smacks of ethical violations.

 Extorting drivers: in response to the city’s budget crisis, Mr. Calkins had a solution: Raise money by ticketing more drivers. The memo proposing this gave no indication that this would improve public safety. After the document's release, all copies in the city's possession were destroyed. Mr. Calkins is paid more than $100,000 a year. Although some city staff have had their hours curtailed, Mr. Calkins's salary has not been affected.


More Police State Tactics: This year, when Pacific resident Cy Sun became a write-in candidate for Mayor and distributed fliers accusing the city of corruption, Mayor Richard Hildreth treated Mr. Sun as an enemy of the state by sending police to investigate and intimidate him. 

The lame "You don’t like us excuse:" At the time Councilman McMahon was rebuking me, it was for speaking up about a public employees’ working conditions and protesting the public safety director’s haughty celebration of police violence. He suggested I was a trouble maker and an enemy of the mayor. (This is a familiar theme: “We’re not wrong, the public is. You just don’t like us.” Mr. Calkins used this excuse when he failed a polygraph examination on whether he threatened someone with a hand gun – he told the city council the examiner just didn’t like him.)

More defiance: Mr. McMahon had three suggestions:
·         Run for Mayor.  Rich is up for re-election November of next year.  File for office.  Put yourself out there and let people know what decisions you would make differently and how you would act as Mayor.
·         Sue him.  You make plenty of accusations of illegal activity on Rich's part.  Back it up.  Sue him.
·         Recall him.  If you can't wait until November to vote against Rich, file a petition to recall him, prove to a court his malfeasance or misfeasance and let the people of Pacific decide the issue.
I think we both know why you won't do any of these. 

 Translation: I’m not here to represent you. You don’t like it, use your own resources to fight city hall. Now go away.

 Insolence: 500 years ago, Shakespeare had a name for this: The insolence of office.
These people define insolence: They display contemptuously rude or impertinent behavior and speech.

And so my question: How did we get to this point? How long are we going to stay here? And why?
 Next in Speed Trap City: More about the Jowers lawsuit.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Misleading documents from Public Safety Division

Pacific City Council President John Jones
Normally, John Jones, the Pacific City Council president, is the picture of decorum. Jones is a man who comes with suit or jacket to city council meetings. He has served on the civil service commission, planning commission and park board. He is thoughtful, dignified and polite. 

But in a recent e-mail to Mark Klaas, editor of the Auburn Reporter, Mr. Jones looks incoherent. His message twists and rambles and stumbles through sentences that never end. This is not the message from a man who can think straight – and for good reason. Mr. Jones looks spitting mad. He has just been tag-teamed by Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth and Public Safety Director John Calkins.

Calkins’ department seems to have produced misleading documents relating to an investigation into Mr.  Hildreth’s misuse of a city credit card. As a result of the documents, a King County prosecutor declined a Pacific City Council request to investigate. Now the mayor is off and running to Mr.  Klaas, who gullibly published Mr. Hildreth’s claim that he has been exonerated. Thoroughly flim-flammed, Mr. Jones might now be in a position to appreciate the experience of Tom Jowers.

Who is this Tom Jowers?
Mr. Jowers is a former fire fighter for the City of Pacific. Last year his lawsuit against the city for wrongful termination was dismissed. Mr. Jowers had been fighting an uphill battle long before last year. Prior to his lawsuit, an administrative hearing judge found against him when he appealed his firing.

Forgery
However, Mr. Jowers says it was only after he lost his appeal that he got his hands on documents submitted to the judge by the public safety division. He says those documents were false and forged. When you look at the documents, it looks like the judge was in a hurry, because they contain contradictions that invalidate them. This is a story that Mr. Jones should pay close attention to.
Obstructing justice accusation
Within the last two years, Public Safety Director Calkins was accused in a Sumner Police Department document of obstructing justice. The case involved a vehicular assault charge against Calkins’ son; the Sumner police learned Calkins had taken over the drafting of a witness statement. The witness was a young woman who was sitting next to his son when he slammed his truck into two vehicles virtually head-on.
 In Tom Jowers’ case, the documents submitted for his appeal contradict themselves by the order of events they describe. According to these documents, a public safety division employee followed an order a week before it was given. The document is signed with Jowers’ name. Jowers said he never saw the document. Summary: you have  documents that can’t possibly be accurate, with one of them signed by a man who says he wasn’t there.

Here are the documents:
  • A memorandum, dated September 21, 2006 and signed by a fire marshal stating that  on September 7, 2006, “the Chief” ordered him to write up Jowers for exceeding his cell phone use. The memo says Jowers was written up that evening and that Jowers signed the write-up.
  • The write-up, which contains the alleged forgery, is dated August 31, 2006, a full week before it was authorized.
 Jowers argues the documents were probably invented months after the dates they allegedly were written, then submitted to the administrative hearing examiner when his appeal came up for consideration.

Sexual harassment and porn
There are some other facts that should raise eyebrows here. The September 21 document says Jowers had discussed bringing a sexual harassment complaint. Since the memo isn’t addressed to anyone, it’s not clear who saw it. But it’s noteworthy that Jowers and another former employee have claimed they were called into Chief Calkin’s office to view pornography on his computer. Maybe someone in the chain of command knew about the porn, saw that mention of sexual harassment, got the jitters and decided Jowers had to go. And if the public documents associated with Jowers’ lawsuit are any indication, there might have been good reason to have the jitters. More on that in coming blogs. 

Council honored Jowers
The time frame for these memoranda is instructive. One week after Jowers was allegedly written up for misusing his cell phone, city council minutes say he was presented with an award for “Professional Excellence.”

Quick summary:
 The public safety division has a director who tampers with a witness in a criminal investigation involving his son. His department has produced a document that contains an alleged forgery. That forged document impeaches an employe who one week later is described as “excellent” before the Pacific City Council. A little over a week after he’s honored by the council, another document is produced that says he signed his reprimand a week before it was authorized.

Documents are nonsense
Are you confused? Don’t be embarrassed.
We’re not talking about ambiguous speech; we are talking about written documents, and it is crystal clear that they make no sense.
These documents were produced by the same public safety division  that ignored instructions of the Pacific City Council and produced documents which caused a prosecutor not to investigate  Mayor Richard Hildreth for misuse of a credit card.


Given these circumstances, it might be a good time for the Pacific City Council to look over the depositions that were taken in the runup to Tom Jowers’ lawsuit. There’s information in those depositions they should see. The council has oversight over the performance of the executive branch and is entitled to that information. In fact, it has a duty to know what was going on.
Next time: Abuse of power in Speed Trap City.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Porn, forgery, and suppression: The disconcerting tale of Tom Jowers


A sidetracked investigation
At this writing, Pacific Mayor Richard Hildreth and the Pacific City Council have been wrangling over the mayor’s unauthorized use of a city credit card. Council members have said the mayor lacked authority to use the card, but he has claimed to be exonerated by a prosecutor who has declined to press charges. The alleged reason the prosecutor declined:  Mr. Hildreth didn’t intend theft or fraud. What gets lost in the translation are two points:  First, intent isn’t an essential element. Using the state’s credit for personal reasons is a serious violation all by itself, regardless of intent and even if theft and fraud weren’t involved. Second, it appears that the council’s demand for an investigation was sabotaged by the public safety division.

Background issues
This raises issues that have been raised before about the character of the individuals involved. The public safety division didn’t follow council instructions in its investigation, and the mayor ignored directives on how the card was to be used. Behind these issues lurk other issues which have been swept aside in the past year and which raise some enormous questions about the integrity of this government. The questions are raised in a lawsuit that was pending in spring 2010. The lawsuit was dismissed and cannot be filed again. That’s a disappointment for the plaintiff, but not necessarily good news for the city, because it makes public some allegations that can’t be easily ignored, if Pacific residents care about respectable government. 

Also, since the city is no longer at risk, there is no reason not to openly discuss the lawsuit.
Plaintiff Tom Jowers, and former Pacific police officer Brian Aldridge claim:
  • While they were probationary employees, Public Safety Director John Calkins called them into his office to view pornography on his computer during duty hours.
  • The rights of employees for civil service and union protections designed to prevent abuse of power were suppressed.
  •  Public safety division documentation submitted to a hearing judge was falsified and contained a forged signature. (The document can’t possibly be true, due to contradictions it contains regarding the chronology of events.)
Naturally, there’s more to share.
Documents support allegations
 Jowers says his lawsuit was quashed for procedural reasons, not because of the merits of his claims. If his allegations are true, something awful was going on, and his story demands to be heard  even if he can’t recover damages. Jower’s claims are backed up by witnesses and by city documents.
Risk-free honesty
In the topsy-turvy world of the courts, the function of trials is not to obtain justice, but to produce winners. And city councils have a duty to preserve the city’s resources by winning court battles, even if they don’t deserve to. But now that Jower’s suit cannot be refiled, the city runs no risk from an open and honest discussion of exactly what was going on in the Public Safety Division, and whether the mayor knew.
Did mayor blindside council?
 Jowers’ lawsuit was pending at the very time that the mayor was rejecting findings by Klickitat County Sheriff Department officials that Mr. Calkins quite likely had abused his power. One of the claims against Mr. Calkins is that he threatened another individual with a hand gun.(Mr. Calkins failed a polygraph examination when he denied the allegation.) It would appear that the Sheriff’s Department investigators weren’t provided details of the lawsuit, and it would also appear that Mayor Hildreth withheld those details from city council members. Mr. Hildreth reportedly met with Councilmen Gary Hulsey and Clint Steiger  to discuss the Sheriff’s Department report, after which he disregarded its findings. Mr. Steiger and Mr. Hulsey are members of the council’s public safety committee and by virtue of that might have been compromised by Mr. Hildreth’s action.
 Is porn OK on City of Pacific computers?
It doesn’t seem credible that Councilmen Hulsey and Steiger would have consented to ignore the Sheriff’s Department investigation if they would end up looking like they were soft on using city computers for porn surfing. So what did these public officials know, and when did they know it?
There will be more details in  the  next Speed Trap City  blog.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Why I don’t Trust Richard Hildreth – a history of deception.

My friend Jeanne Fancher is having a problem with an e-mail from Rich Hildreth, mayor of the City of Pacific. The mayor is claiming that a prosecutor has cleared him of any wrongdoing for use of a city credit card for personal travel. What Jeanne has turned up in her research is that the statement Hildreth attributes to a prosecutor was actually written by his subordinate and public safety director, John Calkins, whose department was supposed to investigate the mayor’s use of the card. The investigation also makes it look like the "fix is in". It appears that the right questions weren't asked. So perhaps the mayor hasn’t been cleared after all. The more Jeanne finds out about this, the more she’s feeling a little flim-flammed. This is typical Richard Hildreth, and it’s just one more example of why I don’t trust the guy. 

The first time I met Richard Hildreth was at Pacific days many years ago. I think it was after his first run as a legislative candidate. He boasted that he was a recovered alcoholic. I thought that sounded a little goofy.  

The next memory I have of him  is his visit to my home when we were hosting a coffee hour about an Auburn School District tax levy. Mr. Hildreth crashed the party so he could insert himself into the conversation to tell us all about himself. That was a lot of cheek. And definitely goofy.
While he was a candidate, he sent me a postcard. It had a photo of one of those saguaro cactuses similar to the one pictured below. 

But Mr Hildreth’s saguaro looked a little different. Its branches looked an awful lot like a hand giving you the finger. The message on the
postcard said “Greetings from Arizona!” Mr. Hildreth  wanted me to know that his opponent had missed some meetings and had a second home in Arizona. He left out any information about his qualifications for being a legislator. By giving us the finger he had graduated from goofy to tasteless.
When I told him what I thought of his postcard, he gave me a real peek into his character. Mr. Hildreth  explained that the people who fund his campaign made that decisions and he just had to go along with them. He was not personally responsible.  
 "I'm George Bush, and..."
Some candidates take responsibility for their campaigns. For example, George Bush closed his ads by saying he approved the message. Mr. Bush is the man who lied to Congress about Iraqi weapons in order to get permission to cause a regime change, kill 100,000 Iraqis, and leave their water supply and electrical grid in a shambles. We’re still paying for it in overseas bases and broken American lives. Destabilizing the country led to further killings between religious factions Mr. Bush should qualify as a war criminal. But to his credit he didn’t say that someone else made him do it. 
"But it gets votes!"
When Mr. Hildreth served on the Proposition One committee to have Pacific run by a city manager he wanted the slogan: “Working for Working Families.” That bothered me, because we were promoting a government, not a candidate who might claim to be “working” for us.  I told Mr. Hildreth this slogan was used over and over again. His response: “Yes, because it works.” Not that it was true. He wanted it for the votes.
"I was violating a different law!"
As a city councilman, Mr. Hildreth falsely claimed that he didn’t violate the law by voting to confirm a treasurer whose position was not advertised because the council had approved an  emergency measure to do that. (it had not).

When I pointed out to him the meeting minutes didn’t mention an emergency measure, he claimed that this was approved in an executive session. (It was not – councils cannot take action in executive session.) Mr. Hildreth was essentially arguing that he didn’t violate one law because he was busy violating another. Goofier and goofier. If anyone doubts this story, I still have the e-mails. 

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!
 When Mr. Hildreth became mayor-elect, he told the council it would be illegal for the city to tell the public his council position would soon be vacant and the public could apply for that seat. This was beyond goofy. He was up to something.

I learned later that he was trying to make it possible for another individual to get that seat– a gentleman who had just been thoroughly booted out of office. In a display of their disrespect for voter sentiment, several council members were privately discussing appointing this individual to Mr. Hildreth’s soon-to-be vacant seat. Although Mr. Hildreth didn’t want the public to know about the vacancy, the mayor at the time, Howard Erickson, announced it in the city’s utility bill. But the following month, when Mr. Hildreth had become mayor, that utility bill carried no mention of the opening. 

"I want a cookie too!"
Here’s another little glimpse at Mr. Hildreth’s methods: In his runup for his mayoral race, he circulated a message that included a statement, “Robert, I know you want to be mayor.” He knew this wasn’t true.

While it was written to look like a message to me, it was never sent to me, because that wasn’t the intent. The intent was to excuse his power grab by claiming that someone else was just as greedy. This is the “I’ll say Johnny wants a cookie, so I can get away with reaching into the jar” argument.

      
These events speak directly to the dishonesty of the person who is now running the City of Pacific and keeping people busy double-checking the false claims he makes.

Truth, lies, and B.S.
There are truth tellers, there are liars, and there are bullshitters. Truth tellers respect the truth and share it; liars respect the truth and hide it; bullshitters don’t concern themelves with truth. They will say anything to get what they want. I don’t like the word, bullshit.” I have a better word:”flob-nos-ti-cate.” Flobnostication is not vulgar, and it conveys the same feeling. If you want to know whether Mr. Hildreth is flobnosticating, look at his lips. If they are moving, he is flobnosticating. He does this to confuse and distract until he gets his way.

Lying to the council
For example, A few years ago, When the council considered holding an executive session to review his nominee for the planning commission, Mr. Hildreth interrupted the council’s workshop to flobnosticate. He claimed that such executive sessions are illegal I  researched the issue twice and came to the next meeting to report the session would be legal. Mr. Hildreth baldly stated that he didn’t care, he just didn’t want the council to review the nominee, and if it did, he would boycott the meeting. The only thing more astounding than his admission that he didn't want the council to perform its duty was that the council didn’t mind. They gave up their prerogative to hold the session and confirmed the appointee. 
A few weeks earlier, the city’s planning director had provided the council a letter admonishing this candidate for the violations of city policies regarding her development on Tacoma Boulevard. One of the council members was the business associate of the nominee and had graded the property so poorly that it flooded the street.By accommodating and rewarding Mr. Hildreth’s deception, the city’s legislative branch subordinated itself to an individual who invents his facts to suit his mood.  They approved a candidate supremely unsuitable for her position.
The reason I resigned after that was the same reason Karen McIver, the council president, resigned  a year or so before me: The elected officials of the City of Pacific constituted a nut house.

Flobnosticating the media
Since then, Mr. Hildreth has been caught on camera telling tall tales. In 2009, KOMO TV reported he had claimed that the State Patrol had investigated Public Safety Director John Calkins and cleared him of complaints. KOMO’s Tracy Vedder contacted the State Patrol and found out they hadn’t conducted any investigation. see: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/45543172.html#fin_main
By this time it should be obvious  that to engage in a conversation with Richard Hildreth is to attempt to make sense out of nonsense. If there is anyone on the council who disagrees with me, I’m betting they are the ones who have approved his credit card expenditures. And that's the important thing to remember: Richard Hildreth gets away with his deceptions because the people he interacts with foster his success. He is a product of the Pacific political culture.
In the next blog of Speed Trap City, I’m going to tell you about porn, forgery and the public safety division.
 



 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Mayor Rich Changes His Tune

Mayor Rich Hildreth is singing a new tune. He had been insisting it was perfectly legal to use a city credit card for his personal business. 
But now the story is that the King County Prosecutor says hizzonor  never intended to break the law.
Huh?What does that mean? By implication it suggests the prosecutor is saying he’s letting the little scofflaw wiggle off the hook. Why would a prosecutor do that?
Here’s what the mayor's announcement says:
1.       "Charges of Corruption found unsubstantiated. Mayor cleared of all allegations
2.       Prosecutor has now officially declined to prosecute stating:  There is no evidence that the use of the credit card in anyway was meant to defraud the City or violate the law."
So if you violated the law unintentionally, how does that clear you of all allegations?
 
 
This looks like a slap in the face of the city council, because it lets the mayor off the hook for thumbing his nose at the branch of government that’s responsible for the purse strings. Why would a prosecutor help him do that?
Let me suggest a different interpretation. Here are some of the shenanigans that have taken place in the last 10 years in Pacific: 
  • On three occasions, a mayor has lost paperwork authorizing a special election for Pacific to replace the mayor with a  city manager, causing King County to operate the election to make sure it was conducted properly. 
  • The city has caused fill dirt and gravel to be dumped on county property in the area of the Stuck river without permission, and possibly in such a manner that flooding was made worse; the county had to pay for the gravel removal. 
  • The public safety division of the city has been involved in racial profiling, which was followed by bringing in police from several jurisdictions to suppress a constitutionally-protected civil rights march. 
  • Afterward, the public safety director was charged with drunk driving and accused of intimidating a police officer; he also tampered with a witness in a vehicular assault collision involving his son. 
  • Following a KOMO TV exposé, the Klickitat County Sheriff’s office investigated the public safety director and found the accusations that he aimed a firearm at another individual to be credible. 
  • Mayor Hildreth threw out the findings. 
 
  • And now Mayor Rich is traveling all over the country on government-paid training for his next career, charging the travel expenses on a city credit card in an apparent violation of the state constitution. Put yourself in the prosecutor’s place. 


What kind of prosecutor wants to focus his resources on nincompoops? I wish I was in the room when the powers that be interviewed hizzonor, because I can imagine what they should have told him:  "Listen, Doofus, we have better things to do than mess with idiots. Knock it off, or we'll show you where the bear passed through the buckwheat!"
Of course, that isn't what the mayor was told, because the investigation was conducted by the police department that answers to him. But maybe the department owed him a favor for ignoring that Klickitat County report. One hand washes the other, right?



Really, Rich. You expect us to believe you?

Next time in Speed Trap City: A brief history of Mayor Rich’s integrity.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The electrician, the Pacific City Council and the Washington State Constitution: Déjà vu all over again


Some things never change. And yes, those who don't learn the mistakes of history are damned to repeat them. For example, in Pacific, Washington, a jerkwater town attached like a carbuncle to the backside of Auburn, the city council has been fighting it out with Mayor Richard Hildreth, a small-time electrician, over the knotty problem of hizzonor's use of a city credit card for personal travel and allotting public funds to underwrite his career plans to become a Federal  Emergency Management Agency instructor. Tsk. Tsk. In Washington, cities are creatures of the state, and the state's constitution has a very specific prohibition about misusing the state's credit. Basically, you don't do it. The city attorney should have been able to tell the mayor that. Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC), an agency that advises public officials, could have told any member of the council that. And Clint Steiger, the council's senior member, should have known that. Which makes it all the more delicious, for reasons yet to be shared.

Mr. Steiger, who likes to point out that he has lived in Pacific most of his life, probably was in town in the 1950s,  when Pacific had perhaps 2,000 people and there weren’t many places to hide. According to Ralph Pommert, now deceased, a bulb grower and former elected official, the city even then had its own electrician-- and this time, instead of being mayor, he was an employee. And what an electrician he was. He did such a fine job for the city on one particular project that the city council voted to give to him all the materials that were left over when the job was done.  According to Mr. Pommert, the King County prosecutor found out about this gift of public property and asked the council members whether they would prefer jail time or resignation. They chose to resign in stages, appointing a few replacements at a time until the entire council had a brand spanking new face. 

But wait! There's more! 
Well, OK, that's what I recall from an interview I had about 35 years ago. But there's apparently even more to the story, as the news clips immediately  below reveal. These came  from a February, 1956 issue of the Auburn Globe-News
I haven't been able to obtain Pacific City Council minutes demonstrating that the entire council resigned, but the back issues of the Globe reveal that the electrician sued for defamation, and six years later the case was finally resolved. At that time, with the issue back on the front burner, there were 19 Pacific city government candidates competing for every elected seat in the city. Lot of excitement.  Since we don't have any record yet showing whether the entire council had been forced to resign, perhaps the current Pacific City Council can ask the prosecutor to research this and see if there is any precedent for pushing them out the door. That would be helpful.  

According to the scuttlebutt, James McMahon, chair of the Pacific City Council finance committee, pictured below, is concerned over misuse of that city credit card.
Well, let's see here. The council procedures call for the finance committee to review all warrants; two members of the finance committee are required to sign off on the validity of the warrants. I think that means sign their names. Yes, their signatures. After that, the entire council votes on whether to pay the bills on what is customarily described as the "consent agenda", or something like that. In other words, I'm given to believe that all the sheep sitting around the council table  nodded their heads and bleated approval for  expenditures which are prohibited by the state's constitution and now some of them want a prosecutor to find out who painted the roses red. I have an idea—why don’t we just all light our hair on fire with gasoline and put it out with a hammer?
Maybe this would be a good time to join in on a song from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. C'mon everyone!
"Oh, painting the roses red
And many a tear we shed
Because we know
They'll cease to grow
In fact, they'll soon be dead
And yet we go ahead
Painting the roses red

Painting the roses red
We're painting the roses red
Oh, pardon me
But Mister Three
Why must you paint them red?

*talking*

Huh? Oh! Well, the fact is, Miss
We planted the white roses by mistake
And...
*singing*
The Queen she likes 'em red
If she saw white instead
She'd raise a fuss
And each of us
Would quickly lose his head
[Alice:Goodness!]
Since this is the part we dread
We're painting the roses red"


Sweet irony
Let’s not miss an opportunity to savor some irony here. A few years ago the city council's mantra was "we're just upholding the law." They were singing this tune during the period when minorities were being racially profiled to the point that a protest march was organized. The response of the city’s public safety director, John Calkins, was to tell the protesters they would be arrested if they exercised their constitutional rights (there's that "constitution" word, again.) and he summoned police from several jurisdictions to add muscle to the threat. Not to be outdone, Mr. Hildreth sent out a press release confirming that the protest would not be allowed, thereby eliminating all opportunity to deny that he approved this move. This was just before the American Civil Liberties Union took a moment to clarify to the city attorney that, gee, uh, there are some fine points of federal criminal law here that, uh, a couple of your public officials just may have violated.  (Now this raises a nagging question for me: Is this really a criminal violation? And if a public official commits that violation, is he a, uh, criminal? I wouldn't want to put any of our officials on the spot, but isn't this kinda the sort of thing you wonder about at times like this? Perhaps Mr. Calkins and Mr. Hildreth had the same concerns, because they not only demonstrated some great tap dancing skills at the time, but they also performed a faster-than-light moonwalk that Michael Jackson would have coveted.

Why listen?
It was following that development that I spoke to the Pacific city council, pointing out to them that violations of law had forced the resignation of the entire city council in years past and offering to share with them some insights that might steer them into calmer waters, if they were interested. In the council's uh, wisdom, they allowed their brightest member to define the response. Nicole Hagestad , whose loony behavior included videotaping members of the audience from her council chair, didn't think there was any reason to receive any further information from the public. And why should they pay attention? They were getting away with this stuff. So far, anyway.


 
There’s a homily you may have heard of: “What goes around comes around.” Now I promised you there would be more to share where Mr. Steiger was concerned, and here it is: A few years ago there was a problem involving a local improvement district; the fees weren’t being collected uniformly The council was supportive of Mayor Howard Erickson’s attempt to find a replacement treasurer, but I raised the issue of ensuring that the person was competent. Granted, competency is an unrealistic expectation in Pacific, so naturally the suggestion was understandably controversial. A firestorm erupted, and the council agreed to evaluate the applicant by hiring her on contract. The city attorney was directed to draw up the contract, which the council would consider when it reconvened. So far, so good. Ah, the day of the meeting came, and Karen McIver, council president and finance chair, did what any professional working any place except Pacific might do – she contacted the city attorney to ensure that everything was in order. 

With eight years experience as mayor, it apparently didn’t occur to  Mr. Erickson that Ms. McIver would take the unprecedented step of performing professionally, or that the city attorney might tell Ms. McIver the truth, that the mayor had instructed him not to draw up the contract or attend the meeting. So at 10 a.m. that morning Ms. McIver and I knew that Mr. Steiger was going to steer the council into confirming the candidate as treasurer instead of hiring her on a temporary contract. He was going to pull the wool over their already half-closed eyes. 

Too dumb to save
Just imagine  the dog and pony show Mr. Erickson and Mr. Steiger put on for us that day, until I rose, said I thought we should not be taking action without our attorney present and left, leaving Richard Hildreth, Ora Meyer, Wayne Strong and Clint Steiger to smugly confirm the new treasurer without bothering to advertise the position as required by city ordinance. By so doing, Mr. Steiger made himself and his three colleagues subject to recall for violating their oaths of office to follow the law. You can’t say they weren’t warned – that was the whole purpose of my walking out. I did my level best to protect those buffoons without getting the attorney fired for telling Ms. McIver the truth, which he was required to do as an officer of the court. My colleagues were just too stupid to protect. 

Inadvertent payback?
As I say, what goes around comes around. based on his shenanigans over the appointment of a city treasurer, Mr. Steiger had led Mr. Hildreth and other council members into violating the law. And now with his use of the city credit card, it is quite possible that Mr. Hildreth has returned the favor, in a kind of unintentional payback. 

Mr. Hildreth's brazen grab at public dollars to pay for his personal education is tasteless, but not unexpected. Taking a page out of Richard Nixon's playbook, he seems to have the attitude that if the mayor does it, it's not illegal. Over the past few years he has worked to create what some people in Eastern Block countries would have referred to as a "cult of personality", sort of the great leader syndrome. Every newsletter he sends out to communicate with the public invariably leaves you wondering how he avoids repetitive motion injury from continually patting himself on the back. During the past summer a number of yards were blooming with signs proclaiming "We Believe in Mayor Rich--a heartwarming display of spontaneous and unsolicited public support akin to hero self-worship. There's nothing that happens in Pacific that hizzonor doesn't attribute to his own good works, and it makes you wonder why we need all those other people at city hall when we have Mayor Rich. His  silence about their contribution is deafening. Meanwhile, the credit card issue grinds ahead as we await for possible word from a prosecutor. I wonder... is misuse of the state’s credit as serious a violation now as it used to be, or has the prosecutor gone soft on greed?
Next time: This blog has touched a lot on the integrity of our mayor. We'll revisit that exciting subject, next blog, on SPEED TRAP CITY!
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