Excerpt from "OFF THE RECORD"

Blather-Fest in Ukiah

by Mark Scaramella

WES HAMILTON, Alternate Public Defender, has been appointed as the County's new Public Defender. Hamilton was chosen from six applicants for the position, three of them from Mendocino County and three from out of the County. The candidates included acting Assistant Public Defender Linda Thompson. Hamilton was recommended for the position by a special ad-hoc local lawyers committee who screened the applicants. Of the six, only Hamilton has any significant amount of felony jury trial experience (mostly from Yolo County). Hamilton is described by people who know him as a "nice guy." But nobody would offer an opinion of his legal acumen or his administrative skill.

THE ALTERNATE PUBLIC DEFENDER'S position is now open. The alternate public defender is the local legal backwater where cases with technical, and often pseudo-conflicts are dumped. It tends to be an employment program for the County's over-abundance of under-employed lawyers. Occasionally, however, referrals to the alternate PD's office are legit. When co-defendants with different charges are in the dock, one of them will be assigned to the alternate public defender because, the legal gods have decreed, the same office can't represent both co-defendants. In the past, these "conflict" technicalities meant something. But nowadays it's just another way to send people away with random sentences picked by throwing darts at judges' doors with minimal defenses — but with the "conflict" problem properly dealt with. It's very cynical. No one knows what will happen at the Alternate Public Defender's office, or even who will pick Hamilton's replacement there.

THE BLATHER-FEST in Ukiah last Thursday night, described by the Ukiah Daily Journal as "Michael Delbar squared off against Joe Wildman" and "Richard Shoemaker went toe-to-toe with Jim Wattenburger" produced large helpings of the usual Mendo political effluent. Everybody was "civil," faux niceness being the supreme Mendocino County virtue in the absence of political principle. Everybody's for jobs, for more small businesses, water, a "good" general plan update, county reorganization, eternal life, and blah blah blah. Nothing resembling a single specific that could reasonably be accomplished by the Supervisors was even within shouting distance of the discussion. But such vague generalities seem to be what Mendolanders want, or settle for anyway. So nothing ever changes in civic policy, much less improves. The so-called conservatives serve the County's business interests, the libs simply want to get themselves and their friends on the public payroll. (The best jobs in Mendocino County are public jobs.)

INCUMBENT Michael Delbar repeated for at least the third time as a candidate that he wants to "streamline" the County's permit process. Self-described conservatives say this at every election, no matter the current status of streamline. What we never hear are the specifics of the presently alleged obstacles. Most of the requirements are state-mandated, however, so "streamlining" them at the County level when much of which can be done is indeed already being done) won't satisfy the whiners. But candidates like Delbar have to say it to prove that they're conservative and to satisfy the wahoos who claim "bureaucracy" is perennially in the way of their free enterprise genius.

MARIJUANA came up, of course. The candidates agreed that there are problems with Mendo's loosely organized semi-legalized marijuana programs, and that maybe there are some unexpected or indirect problems. But we're all for medicine, etc. Nobody mentioned the reasonable approach now being pursued by Oakland, where pot would be brought into a form of genuinely regulated legitimacy.

EVERYBODY BEMOANED the County's water situation but nothing was offered, of course, not even conservation. Wildman criticized Delbar for undermining the County's relationship with the Inland Water and Power Commission, Delbar said he only did what the County wanted. Delbar probably had his own agenda, but the problem was larger than Delbar. Too many lawyers and bureaucrats, too many competing water districts, too much self-interest, etc. Of course, it may be late to reasonably apportion a finite resource in a context of ever greater demand, but the only thing the Supes could do at this point is to require usage gages and flow monitors so that intelligent water shortage allocation decisions can have some basis in fact. But, again, not mentioned in the so-called debate.

THE ONLY marginally useful remarks by Wattenburger were those that targeted the County's bloated management ranks. Wattenburger noted that Los Angeles County has fewer managers per capita than tiny Mendocino. But Wattenburger's only suggestion for reducing the ranks of Mendo department heads was to wait for about eight senior department heads to retire (presumably soon) so that their positions could be eliminated or merged with other departments. (Historically, the supervisors live in fear of their own upper echelon employees.) Even Wildman, who claims to know more about County functioning than his fellow candidates and has been talking consolidation for years, had no specific consolidation suggestions. The two incumbents, Delbar and Shoemaker, seem to have finally realized that Mendo's 30+ Department Heads may be a little much, both of them boldly declaring that the Supes are "considering" reorganization. But the incumbents have never so much as even asked for reorganization proposals from staff, nor have they examined even the simplest consolidations, like putting Animal Control in the Ag Department.

RICHARD SHOEMAKER, making excuses for his own sloth regarding reorganization, even referred to how "cooperative" the many Mendo departments already are, implying that the County is already operating like a Swiss watch and consolidation is a low priority. In fact, Mendo's many offices and sub-offices bicker all the time, pointing fingers at each other at the obvious dysfunctional characteristic of many offices, all the while frittering work time away on endless, and endlessly fruitless, "coordination" meetings. For all of Mendo's obviously bloated supervisory ranks, the County has very little actual management. Management and openness in government are two subjects where supervisors have some real authority, yet those two subjects went completely unmentioned. Questioners for the evening preferred to know "where the candidates stand," not what they intend to do.

IT'S OBVIOUS where they stand — off to the side. They're not supervisors of anything, just spectators — and with blinders at that. That's why 5th District Supervisor Colfax's one public meeting with his Anderson Valley constituents since taking office seven years ago consisted of repeating over and over that he can't do anything about anything. "I'm only one of five supervisors," "County Counsel says..." "There's no money..." and so on. Colfax and his five colleagues moved sprightly enough to get themselves a fat raise, but of course that was to "reward excellence," wasn't it? There has been no discernible improvement in the job performances of their excellencies.

TAKE HOUSING, as one of many examples of inaction by persons who are paid nearly three times in total compensation what the struggling, privately employed Mendolander makes. In the early 90s a County General Plan amendment called for rezoning a few dozen acres in the Willits area for affordable housing. The minimal rezoning wasn't done. Nobody in any of the lushly paid power slots asked why not. All the Supervisors were (and are) of course for affordable housing, but none of them can bring themselves to ask about a minor rezone that was "required" by their own General Plan.

BASIC, ORDINARY management tools that are needed are either not used, not developed, or not in place. Department heads are not asked to report regularly on staffing, hiring gaps, staffing forecasts, workload reviews, lost (out of office) time, etc. Some department heads do some versions of some of this internally, but they're not supervised or reviewed by the supervisors. As a result the "supervisors" don't know enough about what their department heads are doing to even talk intelligently about consolidations or budgets or priorities or relationships between organizations.

CONSOLIDATED client databases could save lots of work and money because the same few hundred Mendolanders are counted as separate "cases" for each department that "serves" them. Keeping track of somebody's address or income status doesn't require twelve different departments doing the same thing.

THE COUNTY'S failure to effectively deal with its budget deficit was not mentioned. (Across the board cuts are the stupidest way possible, and the first method they turn to.) Nor was the County's pension fund shortfall mentioned. Nobody asked. And the candidates didn't bring it up. (Hint: it's broke and likely to get broker.) Nobody mentioned the County employees working without a contract for almost a year, and counting.

THERE WASN'T a single moment where a candidate "squared off" against his opponent. Instead of anyone going "toe-to-toe" they went tippy-toe down the yellow brick road to nowhere.

DELBAR'S DISTRICT has the lowest percentage of Democrats and Greens of the five Supervisorial Districts, making it less likely that Wildman can unseat the incumbent from Potter Valley, especially since Wildman's not offering anything more than liberal blather and his "better qualifications" as an alternative to Delbar. I'm a nicer person than he is may energize the district's numerous thumbsuckers, and sing KZYX listeners serenely beddy bye, but are there enough love bombed wing-wangs who think relative niceness is a political issue and will vote Nice over Less Nice?

MENDOCINO COUNTY ELECTIONS are an infantilized process, even by the goo-goo standards of contemporary American politics. Dumbassification is now a political way of life in this country and is doubly dumb in this doomed county.

WATTENBURGER isn't capitalizing on the obvious unpopularity of Shoemaker, even though the personable challenger got substantially more votes than Shoemaker in the primary — just short of an outright majority. Wattenburger says he's been spending a lot of time going door to door in Ukiah (the entire "district"), listening to people tell him it's time for "a change." Which it is. But a change to what? Wattenburger doesn't say. Ukiah is heavily "liberal" in the nambo-pambo, self-interested way of today's liberalism and most of liberal candidate Phil Baldwin's voters (Baldwin got about 12%) are expected to settle for Shoemaker. To beat Shoemaker, Wattenburger has to adopt as many of third-place finisher Baldwin's practical Ukiah Valley proposals as he can, thus hanging on to as many Baldwin voters as possible. And Baldwin, who knows the reality of Shoemaker-ism ought to suck it up and endorse Wattenburger, even if it means affiliating himself temporarily with undesirables, i.e., the Ukiah Chamber of Commerce. Otherwise the unwitting, the witless and the merely inattentive will vote for Shoemaker and the Board of Spectators will be unchanged from its present state of gross incompetence. But so far Wattenburger hasn't said a word about Baldwin's many sound ideas for civic improvement.

(BALDWIN, the sole progressive in the County to hold public office as a Ukiah City councilman, is anathema to Ukiah's large population of greedheads and dummies.)

QUICK! What's the name of the Republican challenger to First Term Assemblymember Patty Berg? Don't know? Don't care? Join the crowd. Berg occupies one of the many wired districts in the California assembly where challengers don't matter. Computerized gerrymandering has made elections in the Assembly and the State Senate irrelevant. Seats are either "safely" Republican or Democrat so that the party that owns the District simply appoints the winner via a closed, insider process. The two parties then get to keep their campaign fund war chests for their own private purposes because there are very few contested elections to throw money at. This kind of pre-arrangement is also the dominant characteristic of many local elections, too. For example, it's pointless to run for 5th District Supervisor in Mendocino County as a conservative or simply as a person outside the suffocating, pot-soaked consensus of the district's soft liberalism. But, as with Nader at the national level, the Democrats will do everything they can to keep elections from being contested or even fair. (Hint: His last name is Tyrone.)

AS PREDICTED by Supervisor Colfax, the County has hired ex-Napa Chief Administrator Jay Hull as Mendo's Interim Chief Administrator. Described by Napa County when he left as a hands-off boss who didn't "micro-manage" his department heads, he's perfect for Mendo: An expensive, do-nothing kind of guy. The County made it official last week, along with the other predicted expensive, do-nothing hire from Sonoma County, the new Interim Human Resources Director, Dick Gearhart. The Supes will pay Hull $75,000 to do nothing for six months, and $65,000 to Gearhart for even less. Candidate Wattenburger probably included these two in his count of eight pending "retirees" who would have been an opportunity to save some money. But it's obvious the Supes just can't survive a few months without a couple more people doing nothing for them. That must be what they want. An expensive somebody doing nothing is apparently better than a cheap nobody doing nothing.