Covert defends the covert, but he's a bungler

As you know, lawyers and law firms come and go in the good old South Orange County Community College District. I mean, there are so many lawsuits! I gave up keeping track of them years ago.

Ten years ago, when I successfully sued the district for violating my 1st Amendment rights, a guy named Larsen was the district's attorney. For a while, his assistant was a young fella named Bob King. I remembered him 'cause he was such a little weasel. His nose twitched.

Eight or nine years later, King popped up again as the district's Vice Chancellor of Human Resources. Once again, he was a total asshole—he was Mathur's gleeful hatchet man. He left after about two years. Nobody's sure why.

Mostly, though, these lawyers come and go and nobody remembers 'em. But one attorney was an exception. He was the district’s legal beagle in charge of keeping the board of trustees on the right side of the state’s anti-secrecy in government law, commonly known as the Brown Act.

His name was Covert. Spencer Covert. No, I’m not making this up.

Back in 1997, a few of us (mostly notably, Wendy Gabriella and I, with the help of attorney Bill S) took on the district over its repeated violations of the Brown Act. In May of that year, we demanded that the board of trustees “cure and correct” its violations of the law, for they had secretly appointed Raghu Mathur the interim President of Irvine Valley College during an April closed session.

Naturally, the board blew us off. Then, in July, the board held a special meeting in which it reorganized the district, though the item had not been agendized as such. We sued.

A few months later, the board illegally named Mathur the permanent president of the college and, at the same time, it invited an unannounced guest to a closed session. We sued again. We won. (For years, these suits were referred to as “Bauer 1” and “Bauer 2.” I'm so proud.)

I remember Spencer Covert as a scrappy little guy. He always lost, and he was a noisily sore loser. I seem to recall him climbing on a box and yammering. Maybe I just dreamt that.

Eventually, the district decided to let him go. He squawked then, too.

According to this morning’s OC Register, Covert has had a long and colorful career as a Brown Act attorney (Capistrano district lawyer has run afoul of open-meeting laws). Nowadays, he hangs around during Capo Unified school district board meetings:

A school-law attorney who sat in on a private Capistrano Unified school board discussion in which open-meeting laws may have been violated has previously advised school boards to do in private what courts say they should do in public. ¶ Spencer Covert of Tustin was invited to an Aug. 11 closed-session meeting by board President Ellen Addonizio, who said she wanted Covert's advice to ensure that the board would be in compliance with the state's Brown Act open-meeting law. During the meeting, trustees engaged in a sensitive evaluation of Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter's performance. ¶ Covert, however, has run afoul of open-meeting laws at least four times over the past 15 years, according to news reports. Each time, Covert's school-board clients were reprimanded by a judge for not complying with the Brown Act.

The Reg explains that Covert’s last Brown Act FUBAR was in 2003, when a judge ruled that the Orange Unified School District board had discussed a land deal unlawfully during a closed meeting.


Now, Covert has popped up at the Capo school district, which has been “sternly criticized” four times by the OC DA for Brown Act violations.

In a three-page legal complaint dated Sept. 22, the union says that Covert, who is not on the district's payroll, was "admitted to the closed session through a back door out of the view of the public." Then, with Covert in the room, trustees discussed firing or temporarily suspending the superintendent, violating the Brown Act because the meeting's published agenda only referred to a "performance evaluation," not disciplinary action, the complaint says.

The Capo board will discuss the union’s charges Monday night. Meanwhile, some trustees are horrified to learn about Covert’s record as a Brown Act bungler.

The Reg provides the following overview of Covert’s record:

1993: A Riverside County judge orders the Corona-Norco Unified School District to prevent further destruction of copies of a district report on school personnel making repairs to the home of the superintendent and another official. Covert defends the superintendent's decision to shred copies of the report, saying it was not a public record, according to news reports. Covert later tells the Register his role in the case was mischaracterized.

1997: A San Bernardino County judge rules that the Chino Valley Unified School District board illegally met in closed session to fire its superintendent and buy out his contract without giving adequate public notice. The judge chides the school board for refusing to take public comment at special meetings. "Mr. Covert was the chief architect of the termination of a superintendent that ultimately cost Chino taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in addition to legal fees," former Chino trustee Brian Chilstrom says.

1999: Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully Seymour orders trustees of the South Orange County Community College District to tape-record their closed sessions for two years because of what he calls "persistent and defiant misconduct" of state openness laws. Covert says the case was subsequently settled on different, but secret terms.

2003: Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks orders the Orange Unified School District to tape-record the school board's private meetings for three years after finding trustees illegally discussed a land deal behind closed doors in 2001, according to news reports. During four closed-session meetings, trustees discussed acquiring a strip of land from the county on which to build an access road, as well as considered filing a lawsuit against the county to protest a proposed ordinance that would have made the acquisition difficult.

ROYAL SOCIETY EMBARRASSMENT
From Bob Park’s What’s New:

It often seems that creationism is a peculiarly American affliction, but in the UK last month it infected, of all places, the Royal Society. Michael Reiss, the Royal Society's director of education, appeared to endorse the teaching of creationism - worse, Reiss, a biologist, is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. This outraged Richard Roberts, 1993 Nobel prize for gene splicing; he was joined by Harry Kroto, 1996 Nobel prize in Chemistry, and John Sulston, 2002 Nobel prize in Medicine, in demanding that Reiss step down or be fired. Reiss resigned, and there is now discussion of a rules change to make sure clergy cannot fill such positions....

MY FAVORITE RECENT VIDEO: JACK CAFFERTY IS PISSED

Josephine Six-Pack: Unfettered, unhinged

Saw the debate. Sarah Palin came on strong, confident, unfettered. Unfettered even by the rules! She told the world, and Joe Biden too, that from now on she was going to say what she wanted to say. She don’t need no stinkin’ moderator to limit her to, um, actual questions.

Palin returned to perky. She perked herself all the way into suggesting that the Vice President should be given more powers.

In future, be prepared for such exchanges as this:

Andrea Mitchell: Governor Palin, some complain that you often ignore questions.
Governor Palin: Well, yes, Andrea, I really am very knowledgeable about energy.

Meanwhile, her partner, John McCain, continues to be simply incoherent.

The Morning Matinee: Homer Simpson votes!

Tom Fuentes' advisee Tan Nguyen is indicted

Remember Tan Nguyen, the local Congressional candidate who got into hot water in 2006 over a campaign mailer that warned immigrants against voting?

You know! SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes was his senior campaign advisor!

(And remember that babe who sang his theme song, "Stand By Our Tan"? See also the video below.)

Well, according to the OC Register (Former GOP Congress candidate indicted over 2006 mailer),

A Federal grand jury has indicted … Tan Nguyen over a controversial 2006 mailer sent to Latino voters that warned immigrants against voting. ¶ The letter, sent out in the waning days of Nguyen's congressional campaign against Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, was written in Spanish and triggered national headlines with many observers seeing it as the direct result of a long string of GOP candidates increasingly using anti-illegal immigration sentiment to get elected.

Nguyen was never prosecuted for voter intimidation, but the feds did pursue the fellow’s alleged efforts to impede their investigation.

The Reg reminds us of the facts:

During the campaign, Nguyen at first denied knowledge of the mailer – which was sent out under the masthead of an anti-illegal immigration group called California Coalition for Immigration Reform. He then said an overzealous campaign volunteer had engineered the mailer. That campaign volunteer was later hired back when Nguyen issued another explanation of the mailer arguing that the word "emigrado" had simply been mistranslated to "immigrant." … However, the mailer also raised memories of a 1988 episode where uniformed guards were stationed by the GOP in areas with high Latino turnout to benefit the State Assembly campaign of Curt Pringle.

You know who was behind the “uniformed guards” episode, right?

—Yep, Nguyen's senior advisor—our own Tom Fuentes, then the chair of the OC GOP.


Back in 2005 (Tom Fuentes), Gustavo Arellano explained the “poll guards” incident:

You [Tom] approved the use of poll guards to stand outside polling places in Latino neighborhoods when they cast ballots for the 72nd Assembly District race. The Republican Party candidate, Curt Pringle, won the election. But the subsequent furor led to your resignation as communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Orange, an exodus of Latino voters from the GOP (the first of many, it would turn out) and various settlements of lawsuits regarding the matter totaling more than $480,000.

STAND BY OUR TAN (2006):


See also: Tello

UPDATE: the Times’ Oct. 2 story (Former candidate for Congress indicted on charges of obstructing justice) notes that Nguyen’s letter “brought national condemnation from both political parties. Local Democrats and some Republicans decried the letter, saying it was an example of racially tainted voter intimidation.” It also notes that, “If convicted, Nguyen could face up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.”

Random pics on a sunny day

AT IRVINE VALLEY COLLEGE:
Click on images to make them larger.
Frank, teaching history, as seen through safety glass. Don't know what that's for. Historiography gets kinda intense, I guess.

I like these trees, whatever they are. The fuzzy branches: you just wanna touch 'em and roll around in 'em. The flowers are nice, too.

This is the new "Beefsteak" or "Biz-Tic" building. It's sort of a boxy Quonset hut. It would be filled with business students, if we had any.

Some more angles. It's funny: Humanities & Languages--and also Social Sciences--have loads of students. But those Schools don't have a building. Gosh, what's that all about?

Rebel Girl saw this pumpkin in somebody's window. She insisted that I take a pic, don't know why. I never ask Rebel Girl why she wants what she wants.

The Performing Arts Center kinda looks like a cartoon building. Glenn picked the rust-colored paint. He's nuts about that color, they say. "Rust." That should be IVC's motto or mascot.

NEAR MODJESKA CANYON:

Here's some rust. This truck was a casualty of the fire, nearly a year ago now. That's the village of Modjeska Canyon in the background. Rebel Girl lives about a half mile up the canyon.

My Chrysler 300, up on Modjeska Grade. It's very shiny. The car, I mean.

LAMBROSE CANYON:

Back home.

REMEMBER WAYNE WARD?

Back in March of '07, wildly unpopular Director of Maintenance and Operations, Wayne Ward, left Irvine Valley College, after months of controversy regarding his conduct and his Mathurian management style.

Raghu recognizes his own kind. Naturally, when Wayne left, Raghu gave him a prize (see pic).

You'll recall that Wayne moved from IVC to UCI, just up the road, where he got a nice cushy job treating people like sh*t.

I made no great effort to keep up with the Waynster's career. But, today, a friend told me that, two or three months into his UCI gig, he was fired.

Gosh. Anybody got any details?

As Raghu would say, this is obviously "another feather in the cap" of the district.

ACCRED REPORTS FINISHED:

I do believe that the Accreditation Progress Reports (for Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College) are completed. IVC's document was sent to the printer today. They'll be sending the finished product up north to the Accreds any time now.

Isn't it exciting? The Accreds will get back to us with news.

It's like waiting for a report card!

BILL MAHER, YESTERDAY, ON THE DAILY SHOW:

His new movie is sure to offend Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Maher and his movie mostly just take cheap shots, of course. But I like what he says about stupid people in red states. I'm getting to think that we need a Constitutional Amendment, taking the vote away from 'em all.

"Religulous," PART 1:


"Religulous," PART 2:

A seriously wacked Reg article about John McCain's daughter

McCain's daughter visits Irvine:

The OC Register reports that, in Irvine today, people lined up at A Whale of a Tale Children’s Bookshoppe to meet John McCain’s daughter, 23-year-old Meghan McCain, who has written an illustrated biography of the GOP Presidential candidate entitled “My Dad, John McCain.”

The OC Register story quotes someone named Irine Barbashova. "I'm just fed up with the socialists," declares Ms. Barbashova.

OK. So I guess that means she likes McCain. Or does it mean she doesn't like 'im? (He's supporting the bailout.)

The Reg reporter explains that Barbashova arrived at the bookstore with her three daughters, who “seemed preconscious.”

They seemed preconscious? What does that mean? 

Ms. B, we’re told, has a 16-year-old who “wore a psyched smile….”

A psyched smile?

Meghan explains that her first draft of the book was too “ominous” and “intense.” Hence, “A monkey fist that John McCain may have been served as a prisoner of war was softened to a slightly less-gross chicken foot.”

OK, the Reg writer is saying that those nasty North Vietnamese jailers (a) softened prisoners’ meat and also (b) turned this monkey meat into chicken meat. Or maybe John softened and transformed the meat himself. Could be.

Evidently, Meghan was asked whether Sarah Palin would make a good subject for a bio:

"I straight up can't say I know what it's like to be a moose hunter," she said, likening Palin to ye-olde American sharpshooter Annie Oakley.

Ye-olde?

Is it just me, or is this writing seriously wacked?

THE PALIN-MCCAIN FOLLIES CONTINUE:

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