A new analysis by ETA board member Charles McDermott based on documents from the City of Encinitas and CalPERS shows that Encinitas’ pension underfunding is far worse than city leaders admit.

McDermott uses the actual market value of assets in the pension funds as opposed to CalPERS’ inflated “actuarial” values which pretend that the the funds are worth far more than their actual market values.

The calculations can be seen in this spreadsheet.  The source documents can be found here.

Even the $80 million figure may understate the problem as it still uses CalPERS’ highly optimistic assumption that it will earn 7.75% annually on its investments.   If returns fall short by even a few percent, the underfunding will be far more.  Further, these figures consider only already accrued liabilities for past service, not any pensions for city employee earnings going forward.

The Encinitas Taxpayers Association would welcome a response from city staff, city council, or CalPERS.

Throughout the process leading up to the Open Government lawsuit against the City of Encinitas, the City played games with Cummins’ attorney that drove up the cost.

Read the judge’s review here.

When you keep a completed roads report secret from the public, saying it was a draft document, what do you do when the document actually isn’t a draft and you get sued for the release of the document? You change your legal defense! That is what Encinitas did. That was sign number one that the City was full of bologna.

In court, the City changed their defense from saying it was a draft (it had been finalized all along, but the City kept that secret) instead the City just said it would harm the public to release the document. They did not really explain why releasing the roads report (THE FINAL or the previous draft) would have harmed the public. That guaranteed that when they lost the public was going to see through the Council’s statements. They put up a bologna defense which included all sorts of suspicious statements. They also dragged out the lawsuit and kept Cummins’ side from adequately establishing all the facts and their legal responses seemed to have very suspicious “problems” getting delivered. In the end that cost taxpayers.

Most of the City still has no idea that the City is far behind on scheduled roads maintenance. Most of the rest don’t care much. The City should have just released the report and not worry about what the public would think. But, that means they would also been asked to release the Hall park documents which probably would have shown that the park was being artificially delayed because the City’s budget wasn’t adequate to accommodate building the park.

What do you say when you get caught by a citizen, an open government organization, a judge and an appellate court spinning a bologna story that the Cummins’ case was without merit? Use the political spin playbook if you think the public won’t look into the details and keep saying the case was without merit and use the  4 Ds.

For more history on the Hall park and the roads report, see here.

[Note on the roads report: The report purposely fails to report the projected roads conditions beyond 5 years out from now. The road maintenance cycle is much longer than 5 years. Why did the City not want those number reported? We can never know that because City has admitted to destroying the correspondence with the consultant. The City has demonstrated to not be open to tough questions they know they will have to defend.]

To: All Encinitas Concerned Citizens
Monday, November 7, 2011

CITY HALL CONTINUES TO IGNORE OUR VOICE

ENCINITAS CITIZENS PROTEST

Encinitas citizens gather to hold elected officials accountable for engaging in blatant cronyism, ignoring conflicts of interest, and condoning politically corrupt practices.

Concerned Encinitas citizens to hold press conference at City Hall, 505 S. Vulcan, Encinitas, CA 92024, Wednesday, November 9, 2011, at 5:15 p.m., before the regular City Council meeting.

On November 9, at 5:55 pm, the Encinitas City Council plans to swear in Mark Muir into the seat formerly occupied by Maggie Houlihan.  The decision to appoint Mr. Muir was made by the Council majority —Bond, Stocks, Gaspar— in complete disregard for the concerns and wishes expressed by many of the citizens at the City Council meeting of November 2, 2011.

Earlier, at their September 26 (non-televised) Special Meeting, the Council had viewed an eloquent and hopeful videotape of Maggie Houlihan — taped in her last weeks.  Her desire was to seek out someone to step into her shoes, to fulfill the last months of her term of office and to keep true to her campaign promises. She endorsed Lisa Shaffer.  As a popular candidate who was the runner-up in the last election, Tony  Kranz also had a justifiable claim to the seat.  Either Lisa Shaffer or Tony Kranz should have been appointed to serve the remainder of councilperson Houlihan’s term of office.  Instead, the majority appointed their employee, their election campaigner and sitting Encinitas Fire Chief, Mr. Muir.

Why was Mark Muir chosen? Could it be because each of the majority members owed him favors?  Mr. Muir worked on several of their campaigns in the likely expectation of paybacks. This was not democracy in action, this was political quid pro quo.  There is a word for this:  Cronyism!

Mr. Muir funneled endorsements and support through Political Action Committees directly linked to him.  Muir founded and led both ECHO (Encinitas Coalition of Home Owners) and Golden State Firefighters (GSF) which repeatedly endorsed campaigns of Stocks and Bond and paid for deceiving trash mailers.  The International Association of Firefighters described GSF as a “San Diego-based political organization” that circulated “cynical and deceptive” slate mailers.  One of these mailers endorsed Stocks and Bond and included a message and picture of the PAC’s leader, “Mark Muir, Fire Division Chief and Chairman of Golden State Firefighters.”  He organized and established these PACs while employed by the City and benefitting from promotions culminating in his ascension to the well-paid post of Fire Chief for the City of Encinitas.   The term for this is:  Conflict of Interest!

Mr. Muir’s political activity of more than a decade was also a direct violation of City Policy. Egregiously, he campaigned using his city email address from the City Hall during normal business hours.  This is a clear violation of City policy and common standards of ethics.

This was brought to the attention of the Council prior to the appointment.  The Council majority proceeded with the appointment without asking Muir to confirm or deny the allegations.  The accurate characterization of this conduct is: Corruption!

Mr. Muir’s new council vote delivers a 4-to-1 super-majority, and the pro-development majority can rest easy knowing that their developer-funded plans for Encinitas can avoid public vote.   Our current General Plan requires “voter approval” for increases in zoning density unless the Council approves the change by a vote of 4 or more.   With Mr. Muir’s vote replacing Maggie Houlihan’s, this 4-to-1 majority is all but assured.

The negative impacts on our community character and vision for Encinitas are numerous. Among these, we count:

• A super-majority will enable the Council to approve rezoning and up-zoning without voter approval (for example, reconsidering and approving the conversion of the Ecke property from agricultural-zoned —“in perpetuity”— to residential-zoned land).

• A super-majority would be able to push through the replacement of our well-written, original General Plan and approve the controversial redevelopment of the El Camino Real corridor without a vote of the residents.  The proposed plan extends from the recently City-approved Walmart in the north to Encinitas Blvd in the south.  Current proposals would allow four-story or higher multi-use buildings, causing increased traffic congestion, crowding, and a decrease in neighboring New Encinitas residential property values.
• A super-majority would allow immediate obliteration of sunsets by 90-foot tall field-lights for neighbors of the Hall Sports Park (aka Hall “Community” Park)
• A super-majority would effectively enable the Council to approve spot up-zoning of any parcel, irrespective of neighbors’ concerns, whenever a deep-pocket developer asks for it.

Mr. Muir’s appointment means that the 12,488 voters who elected Maggie Houlihan in 2008 will no longer be adequately represented on the Council.  A chance to vote again in November 2012 is upcoming, but unless we show the council majority that we do not believe this appointment is fair, democratic, and morally supportable, they will be emboldened to further abuse our rights and continue to marginalize our participation in the democratic process.  Don’t let them ignore you.

Please come to protest the swearing-in of Mark Muir on Nov 9.

Attend the public protest and press conference in front of City Hall at 5:15 pm, before the Council meeting, and attend the protest during the Council meeting thereafter, at 5:55 pm.

Don’t let them ignore you!

SJMN County to Consider Sunshine Ordinance

Most of the jurisdictions are located in the greater Bay Area. They all grant quicker, cheaper and simpler access to public records than would otherwise be made available. The list includes San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Bernardino counties and the cities of San Jose, Milpitas, Oakland, Berkeley, Benicia, Vallejo and Riverside.

Terry Francke, a longtime open-government advocate and general counsel for the nonprofit Californians Aware, praised Cortese’s effort. But, he cautioned, the search for sunshine may take a long time. Berkeley’s recently crafted ordinance, for example, came after 10 years and 24 draft ordinances. And it now faces a challenge from a citizen-driven ballot initiative that seeks even greater access than what city officials approved.

“I’d like to see every county — and for that matter every city — have one. But this tends to be slow going because the advantages and the merits of having a sunshine ordinance are more readily apparent to residents than to the government agencies that are being asked to adopt them,” Francke said. “So it’s not like a good government fad that just spreads like wildfire” among elected officials.

The City of Encinitas’ practice of treating email differently than physical mail reduces the public’s access to information. The City allows, if not encourages, individual staff members to purge their email routinely.

The LA Times just ran a story about how the retention of email helped identify serious conflicts of interest in the issuance of large building contracts. This sort of email exchange is not accessible to the Encinitas public. For instance, the public (or law enforcement) will never know the contents of email between former Mayor Dalager and the appliance store owners, or with the developer who loaned him $100k.  Those email, if they existed were destroyed promptly, according to Dalager.

Retention of email is cheap and easy. Why does the City purge email?