What is it about Costa Mesa City Manager Tom Hatch that makes it so difficult to follow simple guidelines laid out in a policy? I thought reading comprehension was a basic skill required for his job.
Besides the fact that Hatch failed to notice that a policy existed regarding contracting out of city services, he still wants to manipulate the process to ram through whatever the Council majority wants done. The latest example of his lack of honesty is his “interpretation” of the contracting out policy to exclude effective and fair representation of employee interests required by the policy.
Since the discovery of the policy, Hatch and Costa Mesa City Employee’s Association President Helen Nenadal have exchanged a series of letters regarding the implementation of the contracting committees required. Hatch first tried to rush the scheduling of the first committee meetings on short notice. To make matters worse, he initially insisted on determining not only how many employee representatives would be allowed to participate, but also who they could be.
The policy is quite clear:
Employee Representative
Representatives designated by the appropriate employees’ association to evaluate and provide input regarding the specific service being evaluated.
Key words that Hatch seems to want to ignore are representatives (plural) and employees’ association. Hatch has been fixated first on the number of representatives that he would allow the Association to designate, and then he unilaterally determined that the representative’s also had to be city employees. Neither determination is his to make based upon the policy.
While he has relented on the number of employee representatives allowed on the committee, now permitting three, he refuses to allow the employee association to include their professional representatives in the process. So while management is allowed to have as many of their professional staff, some who are consultants, to participate on the committee, the Employees cannot have their professional staff involved in the process.
I’ve got just two questions for Hatch. What are you afraid of and why can’t you follow the rules as defined by an existing policy?
He knows he will be fired if he does not do the council majority’s bidding. He works for the pleasure of the city council. He is “at will” and can be fired without cause. He was hired specifically to implement the outsourcing scheme. Three seats are open on the city council next November. If a new council is seated and the majority mantra shifts, he will be canned. No other competent city will hire him. He has to succeed. He knew about the council policy. The former city attorney advised him and the council. They fired her and found a “yes man” replacement. Jones and Meyer are just billing away because they know this issue will be tied up in court for at least two years. Hatch is not bright enough to see that his future in government is slowly sinking away. Talk at city hall is that the stress is really getting to him. Poor baby. This is what you get when you do business with the Devil’s henchmen.
Why does Hatch seem so nervous when he speaks at council?