The SOUTH ORANGE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT —
"[The] blog he developed was something that made the district better." - Tim Jemal, SOCCCD BoT President, 7/24/23
On Monday, the OC Reg (here) described John Williams’ response to a “scathing” Grand Jury report about his agency (Trustee Williams is also OC Public Guardian/Administrator). According to the GJ, Johnny Boy is mighty incompetent. Plus he's blowing off the GJ's recommendations.
Today, a reader alerted us that the Reg article has been updated:
UPDATED 7/7/09: James Perez, foreman of the grand jury that published the two reports, said Tuesday that Williams was allowed to review both reports before they were published and that he did not raise concerns about their accuracy.
"He made no factual corrections," Perez said. "What he said was, the facts are correct, but I dispute your interpretation of the facts."
Williams rejects the claims, as well as most of the grand jury's recommendations, in his official response. For example, the grand jury reported that Williams' office took four years to resolve the estate of a man who had died. The estate was worth $7,100 at the time of death, the report said, but it had dwindled to zero before it ever reached the court to be dispersed.
"The public administrator office didn't even handle this case," Williams wrote in his response. He also defended his staffing levels, saying they're in line with other county agencies and that the grand jury comparisons are misleading. He denied pension spiking and said his office has saved the county money.
Williams still has two months to respond to the grand jury's second report, but he doesn't believe voters will support splitting his office or change it from being an elected job.
"It makes as much sense as dividing up sheriff and coroner," Williams said. "It would be too cost prohibitive."
"I encourage you,” he wrote, “to read [these] two very important newspaper articles … regarding the decreasing property taxes in Orange County. This will have an adverse impact on our District budget, especially in the area of basic aid dollars.”
Naturally, the Chancellor’s links to the articles didn’t work. The link to the Reg article opened up my mail program. The link to the Times article opened to a page that did not include the article.
Whatever. I, too, noticed these articles. Our district is an unusual “basic aid” district, which means that we get lots of our funding from a portion of locally collected property taxes. So when property values decline, our funding declines. On the other hand, compared to other districts, we’re swimming in dough, a fact that has inspired resentment across the state.We’ve got shitloads of extra money, and so the issue has been: how do we spend it? New facilities? A bust of St. Ronald?
As you know, here in Dissent, we’ve often noted our dependence on local property taxes, and we’ve monitored board discussions of the situation. We've been on top of it, baby.
So why didn’t I provide a link to yesterday’s articles?
It was because of lines like this one: “Orange County's total property tax values for 2009-10 are down 1.23%....” (LA Times).
One percent. Wow.
You know me: I have no clue about fiscal issues. But I do have a question: do we get a portion of the whole county’s property tax collections (which took a 1% hit) or do we get a portion of the property tax collections specifically for the cities that we serve (i.e., South County cities)?
I ask because some cities—e.g., Laguna Beach and Irvine—actually experienced an increase: they “have slightly increased their assessed values, mainly because of development,” reported the Times.
So exactly where do we stand?
Raghu likes to play the big man. We should just buy him a crown and then ask him to hide somewhere, incommunicado.
I’ve been trying to ignore the endless craziness about Michael Jackson. But it ain’t easy.
Predictably, the reverend Al Sharpton has been milking the situation for all it’s worth. Like many others, he’s giving the people what they want: emotional blatherings about Jackson’s epoch-shattering greatness and his importance to each and every one of us.
Evidently, yesterday, a reporter asked President Obama whether he agrees with such assessments.
I was a little worried.
I shouldn’t have been. Obama did not join in the unseemly emotional gushfest over the death of the self-appointed “King of Pop.” Jackson, he said, like so many other black entertainers and sports figures, has raised Americans’ “comfort level” with African Americans.
That’s pretty understated. Let’s hope this doesn’t inspire calls for his resignation.
Yesterday, the New York Times’ David Brooks managed to put Jackson into some perspective—in a way that likely won’t inspire angry calls that he be fired. (In Search of Dignity.)
His piece concerned the importance of dignity, a trait once exhibited by some of our leaders. He wrote about the death of the “dignity code” and placed Mr. Jackson—and the rest of us—in that unfortunate retrograde saga:
The dignity code commanded its followers to ... put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm. … But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated.
Each week, Brooks writes, one witnesses horrifying new episodes “featuring people who simply do not know how to act.” Some recent examples:
First, there was Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust. ¶ In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.
Brooks ends on a positive note. There is, he says, “the fact of President Obama”:
Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.
May he? Brooks is dreaming. For every dignified and intelligent Presidential moment, there are dozens—hundreds—of moments in which a celebrity gushes or weeps or lets it all hang out.
John Williams—SOCCCD trustee and OC Public Administrator/Guardian—is nothing if not stupid. And so, a month after the OC Grand Jury noisily noted that, as Administrator/Guardian, Williams is an incompetent boob and brazen cronyizer (and a week after the GJ offered a second scathing rebuke, when Williams changed nothing), Mr. Dolt has come out swinging with his trusty bag of gas:
According to the Reg’s Jennifer Muir, in his response, issued today,
Williams laid out his department's accomplishments and cited details in the report that he says are incorrect. [He spotted a split infinitive.] He said he took pains to explain complicated and technical procedures to grand jurors, but they just didn't understand.
That’s likely because John's IQ is very low, and he doesn’t understand this crap himself, so naturally his 'splainin' goes nowhere. (I once saw him with a box of Cracker Jack; he was eating the prize.)
Williams, who is joined on the SOCCCD board by former OC GOP chief Tom Fuentes, is of course a part of Fuentes’ world-o’-corrupt-an’-cynical-an’-butt-ugly cronies (WOCACABUC for short), and so, naturally, in 2005,
County Supervisor John Moorlach supported reorganizing the public administrator and public guardian roles into their own agency…. He also supported a change in 2007 that made whoever was elected to the public administrator job the ex-officio public guardian.
Yeah, that’s how this crew operates. Williams may be a dolt, but he does know how to suck on the public teat and milk it for all its worth. (Check out his five-hundred dollar a night stays in hotels—he especially likes to travel to Orlando—paid for by the taxpayers.) So, amazingly, he got elected to a minor county office, but it has somehow morphed into a big freakin’ job—with a nifty car allowance too!—and he now makes some serious bucks.
Only problem is that he’s fouled things up so badly that even his powerful right-wing friends can’t fix things for ‘im:
"We are very troubled," [Moorlach chief of staff Mario] Mainero said. "We need to sit down and read through Williams' response, and try to decide where we're going." [Lemme save you the trouble: we’re going to Orlando.] In the first report, grand jurors accused Williams of nearly doubling management costs and promoting an employee within a year of retirement, costing the county more than $1 million more for the employee's pension. The report also alleges the public administrator squandered the estate of a person who had died. Last week, grand jurors issued a second scathing report, accusing Williams of continuing the poor management practices, even after being warned.
So, anyway, Johnny has now responded in writing, which means that he had to break out the crayons and start scribblin’ for an hour or two. Using the smelly brown crayon, he has scrawled that
the grand jury reported that [his] office took four years to resolve the estate of a man who had died. … "The public administrator office didn't even handle this case," Williams wrote in his response. He also defended his staffing levels, saying they're in line with other county agencies and that the grand jury comparisons are misleading. He denied pension spiking and said his office has saved the county money.
Yeah, Williams thinks that a denial is a kind of argument, but a really good kind cuz it involves fewer words: "Did not!"
We all know where this is headed, and it ain't Orlando. Will John "Brown Boy" Williams be vindicated? No freakin' way. If you wait long enough, all the denizens of Fuentes/Schroeder World end up in jail or at least on the public’s brownest shit list. Tommy, I think, is headed for hell. I'm an agnostic, but I've already asked the Lord if I can watch.
Williams has two months to respond to the second grand jury report. I can’t wait.
I should mention that in recent years, Williams has fallen out of favor with Tom Fuentes and his nasty crew. Not long ago, Fuentes got his pal Steve Greenhut at the Reg to slam Williams for bein' a RINO (Williams is so cheap that he plays nice with the faculty union to get it to fund his campaigns).
Yeah, but I still blame Fuentes and his ugly and appalling cronyistic machinations. You'd better hope there's no God, Tommy Boy. Near as I can tell, the Lord is down on your M.O., bigtime.
Um, this can't be good. Snarling packs of oldsters over at Leisure World (aka Laguna Woods Village) claim that Saddleback College is swiping state money with light-on-instruction (aka "fake") oldster PE classes with big enrollments (lots of repeat customers, comin' and goin' promiscuously). But wait! The college can answer all that (cuz, like, most o' those geezers like these courses!). And, besides, Saddleback will get back to the Reg reporter with "dollar details"!
The Fourth of July in Modjeska Canyon means a parade down the main road followed by hot dogs and potato chips cooked up by the firefighters in the park.
The little guy dressed up in his thrift store finery and rode his bike in the children's contingent.
Leading the parade, as he does every year, is canyon resident Rusty Richards who used to sing with The Sons of Pioneers.
In lieu of the usual poetic offering, Rebel Girl offers this prose piece which arrived home at the end of the year in her son's homework packet. She doesn't know what assignment directed it nor what kind of grade the little guy received for his effort. It's untitled and clearly fiction. But it does get at some kind of truth. Enjoy. Happy Independence Day, all.
Abe Lincoln and George Washington went on a journey. They were going on the Titanic. When they were on it, in the night, they silently changed the flags. Then they got a lifeboat with food. Later they were out at sea. They managed to get onto a cruiser. Last the war was finally over. They survived.
On Monday, the OC Reg (here) described John Williams’ response to a “scathing” Grand Jury report about his agency (Trustee Williams is also OC Public Guardian/Administrator). According to the GJ, Johnny Boy is mighty incompetent. Plus he's blowing off the GJ's recommendations.
