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.

 

 

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.

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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To make a comment, click on "comments" below. When you post it, sign in as "Anonymous," but then add your name and e-mail address or I likely won't publish your thoughts. I  may edit your comments, but only for clarity, and not to deliver some cheap shot you are not allowed to respond to.  (I'm not the mayor.) Blogging is new for me, so expect gliches. -- Robert