Padberg & Long contra Greenhut/Fuentes

Back on the 21st, OC Register editorial writer Steve Greenhut wrote a column about our district that angered many of us. (See An endangered friend of the taxpayer. I responded here with Red meat and lies.)

Essentially, Greenhut took trustee Tom Fuentes’ demagogic and deceptive rhetoric and ran with it. Consequently, Greenhut's piece was riddled with serious factual errors and offered a distorted picture of our district and its actual challenges and problems.

Allow me to state the obvious. Tom Fuentes, a major player in the OC Republican Party for thirty years, is very connected, and, on this occasion, he got his boy Greenhut to help him out with his campaign for reelection. 

Evidently, Greenhut is the kind of Republican soldier who doesn't mind lying for his political cronies. Gotta support the team, I guess, no matter what.

A week after Greenhut's piece appeared, the Reg printed two “rebuttal” letters, one by trustee Nancy Padberg and another by Irvine Valley College instructor Lewis Long. 

I must confess that I missed the appearance of these letters. Dang! So, belatedly, I present them in full below:

NANCY PADBERG:

Rebuttal:

Steven Greenhut attacks certain board members of the South Orange County Community College District without verifying his alleged facts. Instead he accepts representations from a political opportunist feeding him information. The column was nothing more than a campaign hit piece.

He labels Nancy Padberg, Marcia Milchilker and Bill Jay as union backers and Tom Fuentes, John Williams and Dave Lang as conservative board members seeking reelection. Greenhut states Padberg, Milchiker and Jay support the union. In fact, I have voted against union proposals 96 percent of the time. I never voted to increase teacher salaries by 10 percent. Labeling incumbent John Williams a conservative is ludicrous. Williams has voted for union contract proposals 99.99 percent of the time and repeatedly lobbies board members for the union.

Yes, some of our teachers' – and administrators' – salaries are exorbitant. But Greenhut completely missed the exorbitant salary structure of administrators. I have fought tirelessly to contain all salaries, especially the salaries of administrators. Greenhut did not deal with the board majority approving increases in the numbers of administrators and their pay, nor the fact that such spending brought the district into trouble with a state law known as the 50 percent law. This mandates that 50 percent of the annual $300 million budget go to the classroom.

The current administration will deny this ever was a problem but hired a consultant to massage budget numbers to comply with the law. Recommended was the rapid hiring of some 30 teachers, not for student success but to dig the administration out of a hole. The district chancellor is one of the highest-paid in the state, with a total annual compensation of just under $300,000.

If you believe Greenhut, then I am nothing but a pro-union, tax-and-spend liberal. The opposite is true. I defy anyone to prove my record is anything but that of a fiscal conservative and taxpayer watchdog.

LEWIS LONG:

Rebuttal:

Steven Greenhut's column, "An endangered friend of the taxpayer" [Commentary, Sept. 21], was a stunning display of journalistic irresponsibility.

Greenhut misrepresents board members and candidates. He lists South Orange County Community College District trustees John Williams, Tom Fuentes, David Lang and Donald Wagner as conservative opponents of the teachers, while Nancy Padberg, Marcia Milchiker and William Jay are described as "union backers."

In fact, board candidates Williams, Jay, Bob Bliss and Carolyn Inmon – the latter three former teachers themselves – are supported by the teachers. Carl Christenson is not.

Further, the teacher-endorsed candidates – Williams, Jay, Inmon and Bliss – are all Republicans. And, although not currently up for reelection, life-long conservative Padberg is a member of the Republican Central Committee. On the other hand, Wagner and Lang have both been union-endorsed in past elections, and have been elected with union funding.

More disturbing are Greenhut's slander of our teachers.

All teachers put in far more hours than are required of them; there is simply no other way to teach our students the skills to be successful in college and in the community. By implying that our teachers are lazy, greedy and given to luxurious "sabbaticals to Europe," Greenhut is guilty of a tremendous disservice to the effort that our teachers devote to our students' success. He says that our teachers are required to put in "only 15 classroom hours." In practice, that means four or five classes each semester, many with 45 or more students. The classroom time translates into many more hours spent meeting with students, preparing for classes and grading. All the teachers I know work many extra hours without pay.

Greenhut's claim that the union was "furious" because teachers were required to hold office hours ignores the truth that most teachers put in many more than the required five hours meeting with students in their offices. There has never been any objection, during or outside of contract negotiations, to office hours.

For all of this work, our teachers are not well paid, especially in comparison with neighboring districts' salaries. Our average teacher's salary is ninth, not fourth, in the state, and ranks below every other Orange County district. Some teachers earn more because they teach overtime, but most do not. Salaries for new faculty members are much worse, and those for part-time faculty (teaching half of our students) are very much worse.

Finally, in defending certain board members' fiscal responsibility in avoiding a bond issue, Greenhut misrepresents the board's actions; there is no extraordinary fiscal responsibility here. Our district has not issued a bond because, unlike neighboring districts, our district's property tax income exceeds state funding levels by $40 million to $50 million annually, adding up now to over $170 million in taxpayers' dollars sitting in bank accounts. Some of this money has, indeed, been used to build or refurbish buildings on both campuses. However, this board also has squandered large amounts of taxpayers' money on unnecessary legal fees, outside consultants and overpaid administrators (our district is second in the state in educational administrators' salaries), devoting barely 50 percent of its funding to classroom activities.

Greenhut's and our board's irresponsibility appears nowhere so clearly as in our current accreditation problems, which are most certainly not caused by the quality of the faculty or of our academic programs, which have been applauded by the Accreditation Commission. The colleges' accreditation has been jeopardized by board mismanagement.

In building his partial, slanted attack, Greenhut never bothered to talk to the teachers.

Editor's note: Regarding the teacher salary survey, Mr. Greenhut referenced a 20-year survey that cited the district as fourth-highest in the state. The phrase "apparent union backer" as applied to three board members was based on reporting that showed shifting alliances over the years, not party affiliation or formal endorsements in the upcoming election.

Neither letter received comments.

OBVIOUSITY:

Dave Lang: a moderate Republican and bean counter who, for many years, followed his lights, such as they were. This yielded his bland fiscally conservative decisions and Milquetoastian opposition to the Board Majority/Union Old Guard Axis. But then he got it into his head that he could be OC Treasurer and that Tom Fuentes could help him with that. Hence, he joined forces with Fuentes/Wagner. His faculty backers were dismayed; they asked for an explanation. 

Nothing. 

If honesty were among Dave's virtues, he would have said, "Don't be silly. If I've got to betray you to get what I want, then, obviously, I will betray you."

Tom Fuentes: an utterly self-loathing fellow who, despite his misanthropy and depravity, somehow manages to view himself as the Lord's soldier in these parts. Remaining on the board is important to him, for it is both his penance and his opportunity.

Don Wagner: bright, conservative, ambitious, but hampered by impish and egotistical immaturity. Evidently, in Don's world, he may promote his personal ends, even if that entails the continued inhibition and degradation of a community college district.