Williams’ PA/PG: a “lucrative patronage scam for GOP insiders”

     Check out our good pal Vern Nelson’s marvelous overview and update on the John Williams saga in this morning’s OJ Blog:

When Scumbags Collide: Let Spitzer do his damage to Williams and T-Rack

Some excerpts:

     As you may recall from our May essay (which failed to prevent this baboon’s re-election in June) the Original Sin in the John Williams saga was the combining of the elected, low-paying job of Public Administrator with the appointed, high-paying (up to 200K counting benefits & perks) post of Public Guardian. At the same time this newly combined office was made independent and removed from the supervision of HCA, the Health Care Agency. These two moves had the effect of making Williams’ position permanently unassailable and unaccountable, at least as long as low-information voters go to polls with slate mailers in their hands and/or skip the offices they’ve never heard of. Hence, given his character and that of his associates, the PA/PG office evolved into a lucrative patronage scam for GOP insiders. (As one lady disturbingly said to a friend of mine, “Ah, but John Williams has done so many good things for the Republicans!”)
     Money being no object, Williams began hiring new at-will managers at six figures a year – nearly a dozen, filling posts never before deemed necessary. These were good loyal Republicans who were owed favors, many close to DA Tony Rackauckas – most notably Williams’ top aide Peggi Buff who we’ve just learned is the DA’s bride-to-be. THAT’S quite a convenient set-up for someone who wants to avoid accountability, and a fact that ended up biting Spitzer in the ass. Preferring to spend his time traveling to Florida on the taxpayer dime as ostensibly part of his other gig as a SOCCCD trustee, the ex-bailiff Williams came to rely on all these T-Rack imports to manage the PA/PG job, while doubling the “annual base salary” at the agency by about $1 million a year.
     Well okay, to a degree money’s no object – when you’re pleasing your friends. But it’s gotta be made up somewhere, so staff was cut – the lower-paid “deputies” who do the actual work of going out in the field to meet and work with all these vulnerable people, the aged, mentally ill, sickly, friendless, who still have property of some sort to administer. Overworked underpaid deputies grow demoralized with doubled and tripled caseloads; cases that should take months drag on for years, while the whole time fees are charged to these people’s estates that go to the PA/PG’s office. Oftentimes these fees eat up the whole estate!
     Just last year two DAMNING Grand Jury reports were produced detailing all these fuckups and more, and recommending as a very START that the PA and PG jobs should be separated again, and those jobs brought back under the supervision of the HCA. Orange County CEO Tom Mauk agreed and brought the matter to the Board of Supervisors; Supes Moorlach and Campbell also concurred. John Williams, his position and reputation on the line, didn’t even bother to show up but instead sent his trusty attorney, the ethically challenged Phil Greer who seems to represent every powerful lowlife in the OC. The remaining Supes – Norby, Bates and Nguyen – seeing their trusty attorney on the stand, stood by John Williams.
     …who felt fully exonerated and has continued his reign of incompetence, cronyism and waste, a Teflon wig-topped tortoise of public squander.
     And as these sort of things tend to do, it only gets uglier.
     As his agency’s deficits kept building and he had no desire to terminate any of his highly-paid at-will employees, while the state and the nation began suffering the longest stretch of bad economy in memory, PA/PG John Williams and his circle began to look for ways to raise more money. And the easiest, most logical way seemed to be to pounce more aggressively on the estates of the people he was entrusted to protect and serve, to leech them for fees. And this is what the recent Spitzer kerfuffle helped bring to light….

Be sure to read the whole essay!