From yesterday’s The Liberal OC:Coastline College Trustee wasting money on NYC trip
by Chris Prevatt
Coast Community College Board Trustee, Armando Ruiz, known for resigning just before the last election four years ago so he could double-dip on his retirement, is feeding from the trough once again. He has booked a trip to New York City the weekend before the election to attend a conference of the Association of Community College Trustees.
At a time of severe budget shortfalls, Ruiz has decided to extend his stay an extra night even though the conference ends at noon and there is plenty of time to catch a flight back the same day. I wonder if he is staying the extra night so he can watch the New York City Marathon?
“The fact that he’s going to the conference and that we’re paying for it is an issue,” says Trustee challenger Lorraine Prinsky, “the fact that Ruiz didn’t bother to consider the budget shortfalls and save a little money by leaving on the day the conference ends makes it even worse.”
According to fellow Trustee Jerry Patterson, Coast Community College Board exceeded its budget for travel by over $20,000 last year. Trustees Patterson, Hornbuckle, and Moreno have cancelled their participation in this year’s conference due to budget shortfalls. While community college classes are being cut due to lack of funding Ruiz continues to fund travel junkets and authorize extended stays.
Ruiz will fly home on November 2nd even though the conference will be over and flights were available November 1st (rooms are about $600/night that weekend because of the New York Marathon).
As Ruiz plans his trip to New York, Department chairs at OCC, Golden West and Coastline Colleges have been directed to cut hundreds of classes from the Spring ‘09 schedule.
In the midst of a California and national financial crisis, instead of meeting with constituents or addressing concerns in the community prior to election day, Ruiz will be enjoying an extra day at taxpayer expense in New York City.
The Coast Federation of Educators (CFE), the union that represents full and some of the part-time faculty in the Coast District, has long-taken the position that the Board’s travel budget is out of control. “Trustees, per person, have more money than we have been able to negotiate for faculty for conferences and workshops. That’s backwards, and I don’t see how it best serves our students,” said Dean Mancina, CFE President.
Known as the travel junket king in the Coast Community College District, Ruiz has booked a $600/night hotel room on Times Square in order to attend the Association of Community College Trustees conference, costing taxpayers $3,000.
Ruiz is being challenged by 35 year Cal State Fullerton professor Lorraine Prinsky, who is running on a platform of integrity, leadership and accountability. Prinsky told TheLiberalOC.com “I hope that Mr. Ruiz has a sudden awakening and cancels his taxpayer funded trip. It is unconscionable that at a time when we are cutting classes he would blow money on unnecessary travel.”
4 comments:
Everyone knows that Armando likes a good time! Just ask his pals in our district. Why begrudge such a hard-working public servant like Armando a night on the town?
Yeah, Armando needs a good time in New York. Cancel more classes so you can pay him stay even longer! Better yet, how about retiring AGAIN, Armando? Permanent vacation time, that's what a hard-working public servant like Armando needs.
Hey, trustees work hard and they need their junkets so they can relax a bit. Don't be so hard on the fella. I mean, just look at him. You can tell he heeds it bad.
The article below, published this afternoon by the Register, puts more perspective on the entire issue of Armando Ruiz.
Frank Mickadeit
Columnist
The Orange County Register
Three weeks from today, if history holds to form, a plurality of ill-informed voters in Area 3 of the Coast Community College District will re-elect Armando Ruiz to another four-year term.
I say uninformed because I do not believe most of the voters to be unintelligent – they are simply too busy to really pay attention to what they perceive as a relatively minor race. Were they informed, they would know Ruiz is a scoundrel of the most cynical ilk, a career bureaucrat and politician who systematically milks the system and, I presume, will continue to do so until he is too feeble of mind or body to put his signature to the re-election documents that election after election propel him back into office.
Ruiz first came to my attention during his last election, in 2004. In a series of deft moves, he created for himself a golden – nay, a platinum – parachute that would shame a bond-company CEO.
To paraphrase heavily from one of my own brilliant summations of this complex set of maneuvers, here's how he did it:
In early 2004, Ruiz was an administrator in the South County Community College District. He also was a trustee of the Coast district; his term was up in November.
He wanted to officially "retire" from both jobs on the same day so he could take advantage of a loophole that allowed a person to pull the ultimate pension spike. He also wanted to run again for the Coast board, but if he "retired" from that part-time gig and ran again, he couldn't be listed as an incumbent on the ballot and would risk losing.
Here's how he accomplished both goals: Early in the year, he set his South County retirement for Oct. 31, the Sunday before the Nov. 2 election. Then on Friday, Oct. 29, at 4:32 p.m. – 28 minutes before the county education office closed and he would lose his opportunity – he faxed over a four-sentence letter in which he also retiredfrom the Coast trusteeship, alsoeffective Oct. 31.
This triggered a bizarre law that, until it was changed, allowed a person who left two state jobs on the same day to claim the higher of the two salaries and calculate bothsalaries for his pension. Ruiz's pension was treated as if he had made $106,000 a year at his real job at the South County district (which he did) and $106,000 a year at the Coast district (which he didn't), for a "salary" of $212,000.
In reality, the Coast trusteeship paid an annual stipend of about $10,000, so the most he ever really made was about $116,000 a year. The difference is that Ruiz will get about $108,000 a year for life instead of the $59,000 a year he should have.
And because he waited until the Friday before the election to resign from the board, he remained on the ballot as an incumbent. He won with 41 percent of the vote, two challengers splitting the rest.
When this was discovered, some citizens started a recall. The range of public figures calling for him to simply quit was impressively broad – from the faculty union to charity leader Jean Forbath to conservative then-Treasurer John Moorlach. A member of his own board – former Democratic Congressman Jerry Patterson – helped lead the charge.
But the effort lost momentum and then failed. Ruiz knew he could probably wait it out. So he has spent the past four years: collecting his inflated pension; traveling around the U.S. on the taxpayer's dime; taking campaign contributions from people who do business with the district; and, notably, delaying making public a serious accreditation issue that faces the district he claims to have led so well as its most recent chairman.
I will discuss these issues in Wednesday's column. As in the past, I put a call into Ruiz. He had not called me back as of deadline Monday. I don't hold out much hope he will call today. He has never returned one of my calls and he hung up on education reporter Marla Fisher when she last tried to talk to him about the pension spiking. Nonetheless, I will give him until this afternoon – until 4:32, to be precise.
For excerpts of my 2004-05 columns on Ruiz, click on the Web version of this column at www.ocregister.com/columns/frank/.
Mickadeit writes Mon.-Fri. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com
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