Saturday, January 7, 2012

Gary Hulsey's Dangerous Game


Pacific City Councilman Gary Hulsey has gone on record claiming that the city's new mayor, Cy Sun, didn't really earn the service medals he claims to have earned. Mr. Sun published his claims when he was a candidate for mayor.

Mr. Hulsey is a patriotic individual. After the pledge of allegiance at council meetings, he salutes the flag. I think his behavior is likely sincere. But sincere or not, his objections smack of an intent to betray the November election by having Mr. Sun removed from office.

It's not the first time Pacific voters would have been betrayed. Eight years ago, when Rich Hildreth became mayor, he was betraying the voters right out of the starting gate by lying to the council and undermining their authority. That power grab, and the council's acceptance of it, led to my resignation, followed by the appointment to my vacancy of an individual who had been given the boot, Councilman Clint Steiger. This inauspicious beginning laid the foundation for Mr. Hildreth's eventual fall from grace due to his greed and insensitivity.

Mr. Sun didn't get elected for his claims that he had service medals. He got elected because voters were fed up with the self-serving hypocrisy of a mayor who couldn't wait to get his hands in the cookie jar to pay for his FEMA training, who flagrantly misused the state's credit for personal advantage, and who repeatedly dominated and insulted members of the public. They were also fed up with a public safety director who had developed a reputation as a racial profiling scofflaw and a bully who has been accused in at least one deposition of requiring employees to view porn while on duty. Both Mr. Hulsey and Mr. Steiger had been members of the council's public safety committee, which has oversight over the public safety division.


If anyone should be closely scrutinized, it's the members of the council who repeatedly turned a blind eye to the corruption, and who still believe their inaction is blameless.

Instead of attacking the new mayor, it's time for members of the council, especially Mr. Hulsey, to look at their compliance with outrageous behavior.

Mr. Sun's service in the Korean War has no bearing on what was happening in Pacific. The council's enabling of boorish, bullying, dishonest behavior did have an impact, and the voters have told the elected officials as much.

While Mr. Hulsey and others are poring over documents to bolster their point of view, I'd like to suggest a really old document that is much more relevant—Luke 4:23: Physician, heal thyself.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

A Roadmap to Recall


It’s possible that every member of the Pacific City Council could be vulnerable to recall.
My understanding of the recall process is that the basis for removing public officials from office through the electoral process  is their guilt of misfeasance, malfeasance, or nonfeasance. In other words, they performed poorly (misfeasance), they performed badly (malfeasance), or they didn’t do what they should have done (nonfeasance).

In my opinion, charges of misfeasance can be brought for approving expenditures that occurred due to improper use of a city credit card by Mayor Richard Hildreth. It does not matter that the former mayor paid back the money he borrowed, any more than if a bank robber changed his mind and returned the cash. 


 Nonfeasance can be claimed against the council for tolerating abuses by the public safety division. While it is true that some council members have been re-elected, they have since been informed about alleged abuses (allegations of a forged document and viewing pornography on a city computer during duty hours) and have not taken action to determine the truth of the allegations. 


The city council, being the legislative branch of the government, has oversight over the executive branch. That’s one reason for committees such as the public safety committee and the finance committee to exist. It  is appropriate for the public safety committee to review performance and set standards; and the finance committee must review every expenditure made on behalf of the city and approve them BEFORE they are paid. My belief is that the city honored Mayor Richard Hildreth’s credit card expenditures and by so doing, committed misfeasance.


 If an individual can demonstrate that the council was made aware of egregious abuses and took no action to correct them, or if the council negligently approved improper expenditures, that individual can present the facts to the public and ask the public to sign petitions calling for removal. 


When enough signatures are gathered, a judge reviews the issue to determine whether the claims of misfeasance, malfeasance or nonfeasance describe behavior that qualifies for removal for office.
The judge does not evaluate the truth of the allegations. He only determines whether the allegations, if true, provide sufficient cause for removal.


If approved, the recall proceeds to the ballot, and the voters become the jury. Note that this is not a jury that receives instructions from the judge. This it the jury of public opinion. Once the recall becomes a ballot measure, the voters can kick out the elected officials for the reasons given, or for any reason at all.

In my opinion, it’s not a matter of whether council members can be recalled. There are only two key questions here: First,  whether anyone has the will to take action. Second,  whether the electorate still has a head of steam up, or whether the voters have calmed down since November, when they unmistakably demonstrated that they are miles apart from their elected officials.

If I were to place a bet on this, I would bet that the voters got their rage out of their system and are ready to yawn and move on. But I'm also the guy who thought Cy Sun didn't have the chance in hell of getting elected mayor. 


AFTERTHOUGHT: The summer before I took office on the council, a representative of Canfield, the city’s insurance company, met with candidates and elected officials and said two things I have never forgotten: First, Mayor Howard Erickson had to beg three times for Canfield to represent the city after Mr. Erickson drove their predecessor away. Lose Canfield’s coverage and the city would be in a “world of hurt,” the spokesman said. Between the lines: no insurance, NO CITY!

The second thing Canfield advised was for the city council not to make sound recordings of their meetings and to keep the briefest of minutes, in order to reduce their exposure to lawsuits. The message: The fewer the records you keep, the better. That might be good from a liability standpoint, but it nurtures the type of insolence that aggravated the public and caused the backlash that showed up in the last election.