Liars

My county pen pal emailed me today, reminding me that his efforts to secure OC Public Administrator/Guardian John Williams’ timesheets have run into a roadblock, namely, the assertion that “elected officials do not have to fill out timesheets.” (Williams seems to spend an extraordinary amount of time travelling at taxpayers' expense. One wonders if his records for his two gigs—he's also an SOCCCD trustee—add up.)

Pen Pal sent me a page from a law book evidently cited by the "no can do" County people. I looked at it. It made no sense to me.

Pen Pal notes the following difficulty with the County’s argument: OK, elected officials don't have to keep timesheets; but 75% of Williams’ pay concerns the “Public Guardian” part of his job, and that part is not an elected position; it is appointed.

OK, sounds good, Mr. Pal.

Pen Pal is also pursuing older records (of Williams’ travel/expenses) from the SOCCCD. At this point, he has only received relatively recent records, which we have posted here on DtB. Those data alone paint a remarkable picture.
Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the Voice of OC (VOC) today reports similar trouble that its reporters have experienced, attempting to gain access to public records for a story on federal foreclosure relief dollars:

The Law Behind a Recent Public Records Showdown

Writes VOC’s Adam Elmahrek,

I needed to review records relating to [Santa Ana's] foreclosure relief program and had contacted Shelly Landry-Bayle.... Landry-Bayle wanted me to set up an appointment to review the records ten days hence.

Landry-Bayle did not specifically cite the provision in the CPRA that allows an agency ten days to respond to a request for public records. She just said that the first available time she had for me to view the records was in ten days.

I couldn't wait that long. And [my colleague Tracy] Wood, who has fought public records battles in California for decades, said I didn't have to. Cities are allowed a 10-day response period to respond to records requests when the request requires that they gather records that aren't readily accessible, Wood said….

Wood's position is based on the section of the law stating that "Public records are open to inspection at all times during the office hours of the state or local agency and every person has a right to inspect any public record..."

So Wood and I decided to go to city hall during normal business hours and demand to see the records. We were met by Santa Ana Assistant City Attorney Lisa Stark, who told us we had to make an appointment for another day. We held firm, citing the relevant section of the law.

Stark was none too happy with our response, and, citing Santa Ana's policy on public records, repeatedly insisted that we come back another day. But after realizing that we weren't going anywhere she relented and brought us the records within an hour.

Later, Elmahrek and Wood put the question to CPRA expert (and VOC consultant) Terry Francke, who wrote back:

There is no provision in the California Public Records Act (CPRA) authorizing a public agency routinely to tell requesters to "come back in 10 days”….
. . .
… [T]he Act states that state and local government records "are open to inspection at all times during the office hours of the state or local agency and...except with respect to public records exempt from disclosure by express provisions of law, each state or local agency, upon a request for a copy of records that reasonably describes an identifiable record or records, shall make the records promptly available...

It also states that no provision of the Act, including the 10- and 14-day periods, "shall be construed to permit an agency to delay or obstruct the inspection or copying of public records."….

Rat bastards.

Pen Pal reminded me that Colleen Callahan is running for Public Administrator at the next election. She seem to really have Johnny's number.

SEE ALSO

• The California Public Records Act
• Pocket Guide to the California Public Records Act

Original Mother’s Market relocating by summer (Reg)

A schadenfreudian moment ("Hey, even we aren't that f*cked up!")

Plagiarism Spawns $146-Million Ghostwriting Industry in China, Report Says (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Although China’s university system has long been known to be racked by plagiarism and ghostwriting, a study by a professor at the University of Wuhan, in eastern China, has shown how rampant the practices are, the Associated Press reported.

Commercial sales of ghostwritten dissertations and journal articles were worth nearly 1 billion yuan (or more than $146-million) in 2009, a 500-percent increase over 2007, according to the study, by Shen Yang. And businesses produce only a small portion of the plagiarized papers in circulation.

Professors and senior academic staff members frequently use graduate students to ghostwrite papers, publish junior colleagues' research as their own without citation, or pluck material from published sources.

No way to treat people

This morning’s Inside Higher Ed reports an instance of the sort of thing this blog has railed against: The Fix Was In. IHE refers to an article in South Carolina’s “The State,” which reports

In a move that's been called unprecedented, [U of South Carolina] canceled all bids to hire an architect for its new $90 million Moore School of Business so a donor could pick a design firm of her own choosing.

While no state spending rules were broken, four Columbia firms and their national partners spent months of labor and an estimated $100,000 each hoping to win the project before the school abruptly canceled the bids in a two-sentence memo sent April 2.

Instead, the business school's private foundation will pay an estimated $4 million or more to a New York firm chosen by the school's benefactor, Darla Moore.

Moore, a Lake City financier for whom the school is named, sits on the foundation board. The firm chosen, Raphael Vinoly Architects, was a finalist for the contract but was not going to win it, a source close to the bidding told The State newspaper.
. . .
"In the history of the AIA, it is a rare event that a project is advertised and that our members go though the process of trying to get shortlisted and to have that pulled from the public process," [Adrienne Montare, president of the South Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects] said "I'm not sure there is a precedent in the state."
. . .
She estimated the firms would have spent about $100,000 each preparing their proposals.

"It can be very, very expensive," she said. "And it's all done in hopes that you will be short-listed and the state procurement process will be adhered to."…. (continued)

This sort of thing—where good faith competitors, including the “winner,” are simply taken out of competition at end of the process—is rotten enough. But imagine a hiring process (say, for an administrator or faculty) in which the fix was in from the very beginning!

That's seriously rotten.

SOCCCD

Even when a dishonest process manages to hire the best X for the job, it's still dishonest; it's still a morale killer. Who wants to work at such a place, where good people are treated so foully? I'm not referring to the current SOCCCD Chancellor hiring process, though I am concerned about some potential hiring processes.

Reminder: a couple of months ago, the SOCCCD board decided to move forward with the Chancellor hire ASAP. Further, the President of the SOCCCD board of trustees offered strong reassurances that the Chancellor hiring process will be fair and professional. I am not aware of any reason to doubt those statements. Since then, the district has decided to hire a consulting firm and has done so. (They chose Community College Search Services.) The consultant no doubt will have some sort of presence or involvement even in the early stages of the process. How that will square with the district's Chancellor hiring policy (4011.6) remains to be seen.