Playing the Auburn Card… 0-27

HOLD YOUR HORSES!

Ahem….And now for the news…

Ladies and gentlemen, and, uh, you four apolcalyptic horsemen over there…we interrupt this serialized Armageddon tragedy to consider the absurd – that Auburn will pull Pacific’s chestnuts out of hell fire.  

Now I know almost nothing about the politics of Auburn. A reasonable person might assume that Auburn’s Mayor, Pete Lewis, might be kind. However, he didn’t get elected by being stupid. His chief responsibility is to Auburn voters, and so an obvious question on his mind has to be, “what will we gain from helping Pacific, and what’s the downside?” Put another way, it’s one of the most important questions in any negotiation: If I do that for you, what are you going to do for me?” The obvious response from Pacific, based on recent history, is going to be:  “ask for more?” 

Consider the latest news from Jeanne Fancher, publisher of the  Pacific City Signal blog: The council’s budget committee is meeting with Public Safety Director John Calkins to consider how to hire another patrolman. Mr. Calkins is a former Auburn police officer turned private eye, who was apparently vetted  and supported by Councilman Clint Steiger to become Pacific’s Public Safety Director about 12 years ago. Since then,  Mr. Calkins has failed a polygraph exam on whether he threatened his wife’s former husband with a hand gun; followed policies which were described as racial profiling; called in police from other jurisdictions to suppress a constitutionally-protected march to protest those policies; lost his driver’s license for refusing a blood test to determine whether he was driving drunk; tampered with a witness in his son’s vehicular assault case; screamed at elected officials – you get the idea. 

Mr. Steiger, who has been on the public safety committee for most of the past 12 years, didn’t bat an eye. A couple years ago, he was the individual receiving Mr. Calkin’s proposal to use ticketing as a means of raising money to close a budget shortfall. And he went along with retaining  Mr. Calkins after an outside police agency found reason to believe Calkins had abused his authority. But then, if my sources are correct, Mr. Steiger and Mr. Calkins have been friends outside city hall. You gotta take care of your friends, don’t you?

And so it is Mr. Calkins who is helping the Pacific City Council’s finance committee decide how to spend money at a time when the city is desperately begging for outside help.

I wonder whether Pete Lewis has ever heard the admonition that “he who sups with the devil should use a long spoon?”

But I digress.Time to tune back in to the Pacific Apocalypse. Keep your head down… And…Oooooops!  Watch out for the brimstone!