Participating in local politics isn’t free.
I’ve been writing political commentary and reports for about seven years and I served as a City of Fullerton Commissioner for about six. In that time, I’ve had people openly accost me, my wife, and my kids in public and virtual events. I’ve endured some pretty vile rumors being spread by sitting elected officials throughout my community. I’ve been threatened with having entire City Commissions dissolved in an effort to exclude my participation. I’ve even had people try and get me fired.
All because I wanted to try and do a little good for my community. Yeeesh. I apparently had an impact, just not the kind I had hoped.
I’ve learned quite a few lessons during my term of public service. Unfortunately, some I’ve had to relearn more than once. This past Tuesday I got a sharp reminder of one I frequently forget:
Local politics is full of small minded people who do small minded things.
As sad as that sounds, that’s just how our reality works. Be it Fullerton, Anaheim, Santa Ana, Irvine . . . from School Boards to Special Water Districts, you will find good people getting shanked by self-interested petty people on a monthly basis. It’s sad, ugly, and totally unnecessary. It happens and will continue to happen because most voters have neither the desire to pay attention nor the resolve to hold those who excel in dispatching honest public servants accountable.
Of course this makes sense. If no one is watching and if no one cares, why work with your opposition when you can just neuter them instead?
Last Tuesday just before midnight, the Fullerton City Council stuck a dull shiv into the ribs of Bruce Whitaker (left.) On a 3-2 vote, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, and Ahmad Zahra terminated Whitaker’s term at the Orange County Water District (OCWD) two years early and installed Zahra to fulfill the remainder. Zahra has been on the Council for an entire two months.
The stated reason? “To offer a different perspective.”
That’s it. No joke. That’s the entirety of the rationale offered to remove a public servant from his post responsible for ensuring a clean and abundant water supply to a couple million people.
Before I get into the details, here are a few more lessons for you to consider.
1) The Republican Party in North Orange County is Dead.
There will be no consequences for Fullerton Mayor Pro-Tem Jennifer Fitzgerald — none for herself, none for the people she supports, and none for the clients she represents as a lobbyist because OCGOP Chairman Fred Whitaker is completely and totally powerless to do anything about it. The betrayal against Bruce Whitaker confirms it’s open season on any remaining Republicans in any form of office north of Costa Mesa.
2) Vindictiveness > Public Trust
In her brief remarks before voting to remove Bruce Whitaker, Jan Flory (above) – an **appointed** member of City Council – said in simple terms that her vote was retaliation for her removal from the same water board two years ago. Aside from being factually incorrect, it is entirely unprecedented in Fullerton for an appointed member of a body to direct the removal of an **elected** officer from anything.
3) Might Makes Right
Not one person offered a cogent argument (or even a complete sentence) supporting why the Council should remove Whitaker and appoint Zahra. Tuesday is a reminder that local government decisions get driven by what a majority can do versus what it legally cannot do. The public will get a reason if and when those elected “to serve” feel like it.
Obviously, I’m disgusted by what happened. While I expect this kind of ugly behavior from some elected officials in Fullerton, I didn’t expect it from three.
So, how did we get here? Buckle up buttercup, because here we go:
OCWD 101.
The Orange County Water District (OCWD – board above) is the administrative board responsible for maintaining one of the largest aquifers in the world. California has some interesting laws concerning water, mostly as they relate to personal and property rights. OCWD, along with adjudicated aquifers, has a unique carve out from typical water right laws in that it enables charging anyone with a water well within its service area a fee for every gallon the well pumps. The fee gets used to maintain the aquifer, including the cost of recharging the basin using local water capture, recycled water injection/recharge, as well as purchasing water from import agencies, like the Metropolitan Water District (MWD).
What’s surprising to many is the incredibly large swaths of land and budget under OCWD’s control. The agency owns or controls the entirety of the Santa Ana River, including many square miles of land behind the Prado Dam. This current year has a total budget of $240,000,000, which includes operating costs for the largest urban water recycling facility in the world. All together, OCWD’s assets and programs provide clean and affordable water to 2,500,000 people, employ over 200 excluding capital project contractors, and manages over a billion dollars in assets from the county coast (sea water injection barrier) to the mountains (water capture and retention facilities).
When I tell you the agency is massive and complex, I’m not exaggerating.
In addition to the scale, the agency has an awkward governing structure. Then ten member board has both directly elected officials, appointed governing officials representing municipally owned utilities, and a professional management staff. Governing Board members are paid per meeting, and the compensation can add up quickly. In directly-elected Denis Bilodeau‘s case, his total compensation exceeded $60,000 in 2017.
Keep in mind that in Fullerton, a member of City Council gets paid about $9000 a year.
The ten member board includes almost 100 years of public service-year experience. There are no freshman politicians on the board — and to my knowledge (and someone is welcome to correct me)– no first year councilman has ever been appointed to serve a constituency in the 80+ years of the District’s existence.
I’m not going to get into OCWD and Poseidon here, but that probably has some sort of role to play here as well.
Bruce Whitaker has been Fullerton’s representative to OCWD since 2017. Jan Flory completed the prior term in 2016. She finished her partial term after ejecting Bruce Whitaker in 2014, who was originally appointed to a four year term in 2012. (Yes, the Flory/Whitaker vendetta is as old and stupid as it sounds.) At the meeting Tuesday night and in some discussion since, there’s been a lot of ignorance floating around concerning who shived whom first. I want to be crystal clear about this. Bruce got shived twice. Jan Flory was NOT ejected from a term and she was NOT entitled to serve another one.
Bruce Whitaker is W-I-D-E-L-Y accepted as doing a great job on behalf of Fullerton’s interest at OCWD.
Last month, the Fullerton City Council acted to fill a vacancy on the Council created when Mayor Jesús Silva vacated this at-large seat after winning a new term in Fullerton’s District 3 this November. Jan Flory won the appointment from a field of 26 (including me, and yes, I really did think I had a shot. Sad, I know.) While Fullerton’s appointments to Regional Bodies and Workgroups had already been discussed by the Council two months ago in December with the Council agreeing to keep Whitaker on OCWD, outside of a public meeting Councilman Zahra and Mayor Pro-Tem Fitzgerald directed City Manager Ken Domer to place a new item on the next council agenda concerning appointing now-new-Councilwoman Flory to regional bodies.
I call out the word “directed” above, because the agenda item appeared exactly as Zahra and Fitzgerald instructed.
You may view, and I encourage you to do so, the discussion here.
**A special thank you to Mayor Jesús Silva (right) who not only refused to participate in this mugging, but who correctly pointed out freshman councilmen should focus on doing their jobs before moving on, correctly identified significant consequences for removing Bruce Whitaker that will negatively impact Fullerton ratepayers, and who once again demonstrated Fullerton’s Mayor is a good man.**
After watching that, I was absolutely pissed. It was small, it was petty, and Bruce didn’t deserve it. He’s a good person trying to do good things for Fullerton, and he just got shivved to satisfy the small agendas of others on the Council. This shouldn’t have happened. Fullerton had a good representative to fight for our clean and affordable water and we should get a better explanation as to why we’re putting someone with two months of political experience in charge of $1,000,000,000 of assets used to provide drinking water to 2,000,000+ people.
Because we didn’t get an actual reason, I’m left to speculate, but my guess is Ahmad Zahra (left) wants this position because it’s one of two Regional Boards that pays significant money. The other (Sanitation) is currently occupied by Mayor Silva, who Zahra has no chance of shivving out of an office. Yet.
But, like I said earlier. Local politics isn’t about should. It’s about can. It’s about the difference between what a majority can do and what a majority legally can’t do.
.
Enter the Brown Act.
The Brown Act is to local government what the First Amendment is to the Constitution. It what gives it light and purpose. Like the First Amendment gives you the right to speak your mind without fear of government persecution and the right to petition your government about problems, the Brown Act guarantees your right to know what local government is doing, a right to information concerning decisions, but most importantly– it guarantees your right to participate in decisions before the decision is made.
That’s why every meeting of Supervisors, School Boards, City Councils, special districts, and Commissions requires a period for the public to comment. Not following the Brown Act is so serious that the state legislature has made knowingly violating it a crime punishable by a significant term in prison. If the government body takes action on an item without providing adequate notice to the public or without taking public comment before a decision has been made, the action is null and void.
That’s exactly what happened on Tuesday. The line between what a majority can do and what they legally cannot do got crossed.
The Brown Act requires government agencies to only act on items listed on an agenda, to provide a brief summary of what action will transpire, and to receive public comment on any action before a decision is made. On Tuesday, the agenda as directed by Fitzgerald and Zahra, made no mention of removing Whitaker or appointing Zahra. It only stated appointments would be considered for Councilwoman Flory.
Uh oh.
That means the public wasn’t notified, which means the public couldn’t provide comment on the pending decision.
And that means . . .
Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, and Ahmad Zahra had no legal right to remove Bruce Whitaker and appoint Zahra in his stead. They did it anyway, they broke the law, and they purposely deprived you of your right to attend this meeting and weigh in on the decision before it was made.
What’s worse, after watching the whole sordid discussion Tuesday night, I’m pretty sure they don’t care. I’m pretty sure they’re going to do whatever they want, whenever they want, because they can.
So, what’s your favorite Fullerton political pariah to do in this sad case?
Oh. Right. Immediately file a Brown Act complaint with the City Manager.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand . . . SUSTAINED. Thank God for professional City Staff with a spine.
As a result of the City sustaining by Brown Act Complaint, the illegal outster of Bruce Whitaker by Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, and Ahmad Zahra has been vacated. In Fullerton, at least for another two weeks, you can’t deprive the People of their right to participate in their government and get away with it. The OCGOP might allow you to eat up all the decent Republicans we have left as public servants, but I won’t.
Here’s what should happen next:
- City staff will place this item, after ignoring the specific direction given to them by Zahra and Fitzgerald, on the February 19 agenda.
- Fitzgerald, Flory, and Zahra should apologize to city staff for putting them in the wrong and awkward position to defend their illegal action.
- Flory, Fitzgerald, and Zahra should recuse themselves from discussing and voting on the item, having committed themselves to a course of action before a properly noticed hearing and before hearing public comments
- Fred Whitaker should absolutely destroy Fitzgerald’s political future, anyone she supports, and work to yank at least five clients from Curt Pringle and Associates.
Here’s what will happen next:
- City Staff will place ths item on the February 19 agenda.
- Fitzgerald will likely blame the City Attorney, City Manager, and most probably the City Clerk for not agendizing the item correctly. Aside from being inappropriate, it’s typical behavior when she makes a mistake.
- Flory, Fitzgerald, and Zahra will just repeat their same vote after ignoring public comments and remove Whitaker from OCWD. This is wildly unethical and might even be illegal.
- OCGOP will do nothing and leave Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia, and Yorba Linda Republicans in the gutter. Expect more political assassinations in the months to come.
Obviously, what will happen makes me sad. In the end, I’m only able to delay small people from doing small things in local politics and I’ll be unable to save a good man from the political agendas of those around him.
I suppose I’ll have to enjoy a good public shaming. Three people broke the law to achieve personal ambition and revenge. It was sad, ugly, and unnecessary. It happened and will continue to happen because most voters have neither the desire to pay attention nor the resolve to hold those who excel in dispatching honest public servants accountable.
If you can’t get a line of people to show up and object to Council breaking the law to push a sorry political agenda, what can you get one for?
Blockbuster and all true!
I hate to say it, Ryan, but it sounds like Fullerton is joining Anaheim in the “traditional party differences do not apply here” category.
I’m glad to see that Silva has proven to be a standup guy as an elected.
By the way, the title is misleading: this wasn’t attempted murder, just attempted maiming.
I think that I may have a follow up analysis on this within a few days.
“I hate to say it, Ryan, but it sounds like Fullerton is joining Anaheim in the “traditional party differences do not apply here” category.”
I’ve been saying that about both towns for years. I never trusted Flory or Chaffee… or Alvarez who wouldn’t even say what party he was in.
So very well stated and written Ryan. Bruce has been a friend for more than 25 years and to see him treated in this manner is unconscionable.
Thank you for this in-depth article. You do an incredible job here of exposing the outrageous and illegal behavior of three of our city council members. Its incredibly disheartening but also steadies my resolve to participate and hold our politicians accountable.
Here’s what I don’t really think you appreciate, Ryan. Flory is probably the angriest and most vindictive person I’ve ever had the misfortune of crossing paths in politics. She is STILL trying to eradicate the last vestige of the Fullerton Recall of 1994 when nobodies had the effrontery to challenge the City establishment on the completely unnecessary utility tax. And the nobodies won: the tax was repealed.
Poor Bruce was one of the five Recall proponents, and as the last vestige of the Recall, and harming him (and people like him) has always been the mission of Flory’s political career.
Well of course she’d be angry when you see her. This is the downside of all those surely satisfying years of “Gin Flurry” attacks on FFFF. Or did it never occur to you all that time that it could have a lasting impact?
Haha. So ignorant. Flory has been the way she is since the first day I met her in 1992 I believe, 15 years before that blog started and decades before you appeared on the scene to pontificate about things about which you know zip.
Gin Flurry? That’s funny.
You certainly think that it’s funny; you and your crowd at the old FFFF pounded that insult frequently and consistently enough. How’d that work out for you, sport?
Accepting your judgment of Flory would require a lot more faith in your powers of perception and judgment than you can reasonably expect. (That’s the nice way of saying it.)
I don’t need to trust David, his observations of Flory comport with my own. Since 2011. Which is not when the world started either.
Excellent and informative right up. Can we put this article in the Fullerton Observer?
That would be great with me, if it’s okay with Ryan.
Make sure to put “reprinted from the Orange Juice Blog.”
I think they might like something a little more tailored to their needs, but they’re welcome to pull from here if they like.
If not, I’ll send something over tonight after bedtime for the kiddos.
I presume you know how to get in touch with them? I don’t know this Stein, but Jesse LaTour writes for them a lot, and Sharon Kennedy runs it I think – they’re both fb friends
Yessir.
You mentioned a “Fred” Whitaker in your excellent analysis. If you submit it to the Observer, you may wish to correct to “Bruce.”
Different person, but thank you very much!
Bruce = Fullerton
Fred = Orange, and Chairman of OCGOP
No relation.
Also Tim “Semper Fi” Whitacre = former Marine, slightly extremist and goofy (but my friend) Republican activist, former OJ blogger, spelled slightly different, no relation.
Man this really gets me mad. I just recently got married and moved up fullerton from Redondo Beach knowing that I had a little more strength in my vote but now I feel like all of California is doomed. I don’t know what to do anymore. What the heck is going on.
What is zharas views on poseidon? I believe Bruce was anti poseidon?
Bruce was great against Poseidon.
Flory before him seemed great, she always spoke and voted against it, but when she was desperate to keep that post she promised the council she’d take whatever position they wanted on it. And I hear that, just like she makes lots of decisions based on grudges on council (against Whitaker, Bushala, etc.) her anti-Poseidon position was mostly inspired by her grudges against Bilodeau and Steve Sheldon.
Zahra tells me he’s against it. He even tells me Jennifer Fitzgerald is against it, which is hard to believe. He claims the whole council is against it, and that he would like them to pass a resolution against it. But it’s really getting hard to believe what he says, he seems like he tells people what they want to hear. And he’s got that close connection with pro-Poseidon Brandman, who is back on OCWD.
Oh no I didn’t know he was close to brandman !!?
“…he seems like he tells people what they want to hear”
Well, hard to say. But it’s safe to say nobody wants to hear a long-winded sermon by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
“Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, and Ahmad Zahra had no legal right to remove Bruce Whitaker and appoint Zahra in his stead.”
Yes, but if we dig deep enough we will find lawlessness all around us whether it be the school boards, city councils, or various commissions. They are all corrupted. I know because I have invested myself in the “process” for a few years only to find that the folks in charge of things have no business making decisions on our behalf. They are not worthy. That’s an intentionally broad statement, based on my experience.
That’s why the guy at the bottom of the story is saying “MEH.” But here, we keep fighting. It’s all we can do.
I understand.
Ryan, great piece (as always the case) but I can add one more “What should happen:”
The City Attorney should retire or otherwise go away. He has been incompetent, bumbling, and a waste of tax payer money for going on a decade now.
Sorry, sounds mean. But he sat by without recognizing their error and in other situations has actively given wrong advice.
Yes, indeed. But he’s been a loyal (if well-remunerated) flunky for the Machine since well before I moved out of Fullerton.
His biggest offense was permitting the illegal water tax to continue year after year after year. But really, the list of Jonesie’s f-up is very long.
You know, I hear you, but I don’t want a City Attorney that leaps into action to stop Council from their own stupidity.
The CA’s job is to provide Council with the tools and opinions it needs to execute the will of the people. Like a parliamentarian, the CA works best when assisting the Chair and not when it preempts the Chair.
In this case, I caught this violation because of the training the Clerk and City Attorney provided me over six years. So, by that measure, that team is doing their job– equipping me (a commissioner) with the tools I need to execute the will of the people during a meeting I participate in.
I’m much more concerned with people like Fitzgerald and Flory who have hours if not days worth of training from the City Attorney and Clerk on Brown Act, ethics, and harassment basics.
They freaking blew through this without blinking because their personal agenda was more important than the law and the will of the people.
Could Dick Jones have stopped them? Maybe, but I’m not sure he had a responsibility to save them from being reckless. In the end, it was his call to sustain or deny my complaint and it was Council’s job to follow the law.
He sustained it and rightfully so– because that actually is his job. Council didn’t do theirs.
“Could Dick Jones have stopped them?”
He could have and should have piped up during the appointment and said “this was not on the agenda and if you proceed you will have to do it again, and then will have obviously violated the Brown Act. Seriously, he gets big bucks, and for what? But of course he may very well have been sound asleep.
The City Clerk also could have and should have said something when the train left the tracks. She is also another highly compensated public employee whose “expertise” is supposed to be exercised on the public’s behalf; otherwise, who needs one? Anybody can fill out an an agenda template and file papers.
One thing is dead certain. Nobody will take the blame for this in any meaningful way. It’s still good old Fullerton.
Completely agree. Dick Jones should have spoken up.
Was this one of those “important decisions” for which Fitzgersld insisted Fullerton needed a fifth council person now rather than waiting for a special election?
Or was this one of those “important decisions” for which Fitzgerald needed Jan Flory to help push forward her agenda?
Thank you for this article. I don’t know what’s happening in Fullerton politics because I haven’t made the time to do so but I will now. And I will share this article on facebook for my Fullerton friends who might be able to make that meeting. I can only hope it will do some good.
“**”?
A Ryanism that the editors retained. We assume it is meant for mild emphasis.
Speaking of that passage, I agree that Jesus is a good man, and did the right thing here, but all of this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t voted for Jan Flory in the first place.
He was under a lot of pressure to vote for a Democrat, giving Fullerton’s Council its first majority since … ever? He could have chosen someone from the party far worse than Flory, but I won’t name names.
The majority should be focused on selecting three people who make wise decisions for the betterment of Fullerton.
That there was “a lot of pressure to vote for a Democrat” is everything wrong with the entire process.
If there was pressure to vote for a Democrat, it should have gone to a special election, where the party can properly apply pressure to the voter, and not the appointer, where it belongs.
Well, there have been decades of contrary pressure to support only Republicans, so perhaps it is understandable. There was a good case for supporting at least one Republican in the field, but I’m sure modesty forbids your discussing it.
By the way, I looked that the downtown-cracking district map again as part of this whole thing. Redistricting cannot come soon enough.
I like Greg Diamond as warrior.
I dislike Greg Diamond as apologist.
I dislike Vern Nelson as bootlicker.
Then again, my saying so doesn’t mean that he’s a bootlicker (due to his friendship with Bushala) any more than his saying he doesn’t like me as an apologist means that I’m an apologist because at some point I’m willing to defer to Silva’s judgment about his city.
So funny. The reality is they could have chosen a decent Democrat and not have settled for Flory because someone, somewhere could conceive of a worse choice.
But of course there was no worse choice even if the choosers gave a damn about good government instead of what they do care about.
I seem to remember somebody once proclaiming that anything ANYTHING proposed by Fitzgerald must be automatically opposed as a litmus test of some sort. But I almost can’t remember who said it.
um….
I said it — of candidates. The question here is whether I feel comfortable in substituting my judgment for Jesus’s, when he knows the players a whole lot better than I do. And I don’t. Unlike Vern, I don’t consider you to be a font of unadulterated truth and good judgment. You’re a font of occasional insight mixed with contempt and bullshit, with ego-boosting contempt in the driver’s seat.
And, again, if Flory is insufferable now when it comes to Fullerton politics, you as much as anyone made her that way. And you’re incapable of the self-reflection necessary to see and admit it.
*Tip O’Neill wrote a book and in it he said: “All Politics is Local!” They used to talk about “Gutter Politics”, they used to talk about “Riding someone out of town on a rail!” They used to talk about “Tarred and Feathered”. We love Bruce and Linda…..but for many years they have been trying to run in the middle. As a result….you can get run over by either side, depending on the political pay-offs involved. People here talk about “Revenge Politicis” for some passed actions. In our humble experience, that happens, but not so often. Basically, someone got paid for this action…or will be paid in the future. Bruce failed to count votes and failed to have insider info, when he needed it….to avert the action. This might work out however and Bruce can now use the Victim Card….which is usually good for one election cycle. After that, he will be gone unless he fight back strongly, starts to leverage his other votes, meets with various leadership clubs and groups including the Chamber of Commerce. This is or should be a wake up call…..to get off his duff……and attack. But then, Bruce and Linda never listen much to us…….so what do we know?
Thank you Ryan for this article.
Wow! Thank you Ryan for this article and for all your research. We’ve been in Fullerton for years, but didn’t know all this icky stuff. I will be paying much closer attention from now on.
*Yeah, you better pay attention. Back in 1956, we used to go to the Methodist Church and then they found out that our Preacher was a head of the local Communist Party. Mom, wouldn’t let us go back. Icky stuff….eh?
*But we will always be FUHS Alumni! The hoods used to hang out at the Hillside so we went to the Bean Hut in Anaheim…..just greasers there! Nice greasers!
*Actually, the Soc’s, The Football guys and the hoods – hung out at the Hillside.. Fullerton Indians…all the way – but still went to the Bean Hut! Even when Mickey Flynn killed us in every Colonists/Indian game in September! One thing however, we never put our Indian decals on our
’40 Ford Coupe. Nosed and decked and with 4-2’s, Stromberg 97’s, with a Mallory Distributor, Edelbrock Manifold and Evans Heads.
Earth to Winship, Earth to Winship. Your obit is decaying.
*DZ – you evidently grew up as a deprived child. Unaccepted at birthday parties, club meetings and general fun get-to-gethers! We understand. We have suffered the same
slings and arrows of unbridled…..whatever! For once, please, please try to bring some intelligent information to the group that might in fact embellish their knowledge of society and of the state of current affairs. Nah, never mind…..just have another Diet Coke and make sure that the delivery man will be their with your next supply – when you run out.
Was this thread supposed to be about Bruce Whitaker and Fulleron….or was that just a false lead?