Accountability

One of the hallmarks of Claremont's dysfunctionality is the lack of accountability practiced by the Claremont 400, groups like the Claremont League of Women Voters, and the Claremont city government.

The wonderful folks in the Claremont 400 love to prattle on about the perfection of city staff, the City Council, but they hate to stand up and take responsibility for the sometimes awful results of their actions and inactions.

The recent advertisement in the Claremont Courier by Claremont School Board candidate Hilary LaConte is but one example of them being wrong but refusing to come out and admit it in plain English.

Rather than apologize for attacking one of her opponents at a candidate forum for being right about the matter of inter-district transfers, in her ad LaConte issued this rather remarkable bit of prolixity:

My comment should only have referenced the application process, because in fact as I indicated, any student may apply to transfer to Claremont. The new insight to be gleaned is that the District does utilize a prioritization process to sort the list of students awaiting admission.

What is this person saying? Do literate people really use such passive constructions as "The new insight to be gleaned...?" And shouldn't a school board candidate at least be fluent in English?

The use of jargon and long-winded explanations is the last refuge of the bureaucrat responding to a problem. It allows one to sound erudite and impressive without saying anything at all. Sounds like a good fit for the Claremont school board.

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The accountability hot potato was flying around the City Council chambers at the October 10th city council meeting when, in response to Dean McHenry's questioning about the $17.5 million Palmer Canyon settlement, Councilperson Linda Elderkin wondered aloud, in essence, "Why do we have to keep talking about this?" Or words to that effect. (We're working on video of this, but we're having some technical difficulties, so bear with us.)

Elderkin's question was its own answer. The harder the people at City Hall try to bury things, the more people are going to call them on it.

And City Manager Jeff Parker has been no better, claiming again and again that the settlement was an insurance decision and that the city had done nothing wrong. Yes, Jeff, this was a $17.5 million nuisance settlement. Right.

Let's face it folks, the city's insurer realized that the potential at trial for the plaintiffs to be awarded a much larger judgment led the city's insurer to seek a pretrial settlement. If the insurer did not believe there was a chance that a jury would find liability on the city's part, they would not have made such a generous offer. The insurer, the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, has said as much.

By the way, that $17.5 million is believed to be the largest amount ever paid out by the JPIA, which is an insurance pool of California local governments. It's not like they pay out $17.5 million for every slip-and-fall and police or fire liability claim made against its member cities.

At the September 25th Council meeting, Councilmember Corey Calaycay made the lamest defense of all for the city's responsibility for the 2003 fire damage. Calaycay told about his father, who as a doctor was a defendant in a medical malpractice case in which Dr. Calaycay's insurance company made a settlement. Councilmember Calaycay said his father had done nothing wrong, but the insurer settled anyway.

Calaycay's comparison was a false analogy. We can infer from the lack of any malpractice awards being listed against Dr. Calaycay on the California Medical Board's website that the settlement was less than $30,000. In California, anything under $30,000 is not reportable to the Medical Board. These sorts of settlements are true nuisance offers and represent no admission of liability.

There's a big difference between such a low settlement and a $17.5 million one, and the public interest is not advanced by this sort of false reasoning.

It's high time for our elected and appointed officials and their staffs to speak honestly and truthfully to themselves and to us. We deserve no less.