Greenhut Gas: 9-20-07

Apparently this is the week for hypocrisy in Orange County; go figure, It all has something to do with Supervisor John Moorlach.

Yesterday Steven Greenhut over on Orange Punch blog blew off some gas about the leaked analysis of Moorlach’s proposed legal challenge to the 2002 increase in Deputy Sheriff pension benefit rates. In one of his posts, which he headlined with the suggestive title Did Nguyen’s office leak pension memo?, Greenhut suggests that it must be Supervisor Nguyen’s office that released the memo to the press since all of the other offices tripped over each other to deny they had anything to do with it before she returned his call.

While Greenhut did eventually report that Nguyen denied her office had anything to do with releasing the memo, once he threw out the misleading supposition of her complicity the damage was done.  No amount of denial on Nguyen’s part can correct the damage he has fostered with his unfounded supposition.  Now before people try to connect me to Nguyen as one of her supporters, remember I am a partisan liberal Democrat.  I do not support Janet Nguyen in her possible effort to seek a full term on the Board of Supervisors.  But what would it have hurt for Greenhut to wait to write his post until he had heard form Nguyen?  Other than the impact of his thinly veiled suggestion of her involvement in the release of a memo damning analysis of Moorlach’s folly, nothing.

Then Mr. Gas Bag took Sheriff Mike Carona and AOCDS President Wayne Quint to task over their demand that the Board release the study since it was paid for with public dollars.

It’s ironic that Sheriff Mike Carona and Wayne Quint, the union boss, argued at the board meeting that because the document is paid for with public dollars that it should be made public. OK … does that mean neither of them have attorney-client privilege in any cases they are involved in? Ironically, both men have opposed efforts to make public information about abusive deputies. Those deputies are paid for with public funds and their misbehavior involves the public, but the Carona/Quint duo don’t believe in openness in those cases.

Okay, Steven can take that perspective but here is a different one. Since he believes so strongly in the interests of government transparency and openness, why is he not challenging the Board to release the publicly funded study that does not support Moorlach’s position?  Why is it that he has no problem with the Board keeping its secrets, but refuses to accept that accusations made against a law enforcement officer for which the officer has been exonerated of wrong doing should remain sealed from public view.

Then we have more Greenhut Gas on the matter of the Board of Supervisors spiking their pension benefits just before Moorlach presents his challenge to the 2002 increase in the Deputy Sheriff pension benefit rate. [Union whines about thousands as it squanders hundreds of millions]. Greenhut, along with Moorlach has been leading the rally cry that the 2002 increase is unconstitutional, and that based upon that principle the current Board is justified in seeking to repeal those benefits.  Where is Greenhut’s principle when the over-paid Board of Supervisors spikes its own pension plan and other benefits under the cover of attacking a 5 year old action by a prior board.

It looks like the only principle that applies here is the Principle of Hypocrisy. 

3 Comments

  1. IN defense of Steve a bit here; he did praise the Lincoln Club for endorsing her bid for re-election as the right thing for that influential Republican Club to do; and that endorsement makes it harder for the Van Tran Taliban to fund Trung. Janet could be much more proactive in her work with the press.

    And for our readers, you should know that we do get replies from Steve and Marty Wiskol but for some reason, mail from the Register gets hung in our spam filter. So if there is a delayed response from them, it’s our fault it doesn’t appear timely or not.

  2. I thought the commenter Dan hit the nail on the head:

    Steven your argument defines self serving greed by the dollar amount rather than the act that occurred. Does the dollar amount change the fact that the supervisors increased their own retirement contributions by 33 percent? Especially while claiming to be against pension spiking!

    I think the title of Peggy Lowe’s article was absolutely on target. Hypocrisy is oozing out of the Hall of Administration.

  3. hmmm…

    this quote from the Greenhut piece stuck me as odd,

    “The board has gotten three analyses from outside firms of its legal position — a standard practice as anyone considers legal strategy. All three opinions are protected by attorney-client privilege. The first, by a firm that specializes in municipal bond work, counseled against the strategy. The second argued that that it is a sound constitutional strategy, and the third — which, apparently, ignores the constitutional arguments and looks almost entirely at what pragmatic concerns — is the one that was released to a Register reporter.”

    How did Greenhut know about the legal opinions in the supposedly NON-leaked reports?!

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