Remembering Richard McKee

In case you haven't already heard, Richard McKee died Saturday. McKee, an open government activist who lived in La Verne, was well-known in Claremont, having taken the City to court a few times during the Glenn Southard administration.

Just last month, McKee had an opinion piece in the Daily Bulletin (now sequestered behind the Bulletin's pay wall) reminding readers of the responsibility each of us bears in a participatory democracy and of the risks we take in shirking those duties.

McKee, who taught chemistry at Pasadena City College, was a citizen activist in the purest sense, and, as former Claremont Courier reporter Gary Scott notes, we all have McKee to thank for our access to local government records:

McKee fought every day to ensure California lived up to a simple and obvious idea. He believed the public has a right to know what the government it elected was doing....

It was a simple idea, and yet McKee spent more than a decade fighting nearly identical battles in city after city, county after county, as craven government officials decided it was easier to conceal than to reveal. The salary scandal in the City of Bell - the one that won the Los Angeles Times a Pulitzer - shows what happens when people like McKee are not around. He not only fought his battles, but he fought countless battles on behalf of people who did not know they had rights.

We first saw McKee when he was active with the California First Amendment Coalition and then later when he, CFAC general counsel Terry Francke, and others broke off and formed Californians Aware, another open government activist group.

La Verne Online has an obit for McKee, and it reminds us that his activism did carry a personal cost:

While most of McKee’s efforts were focused on open government education, to protect the public’s rights, he also litigated 14 successful open government and First Amendment lawsuits, often representing himself. KPFK radio dubbed him “John Q. Citizen.” KCET’s “Life & Times Tonight” called him “the citizen who won’t shut up and go away.” The Times characterized him as “the scourge of public agencies across the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles County” who “walks softly and carries a big stick.” The Sacramento Bee christened him “Mr. Sunshine,” a man with “a head for the law, a heart for justice and a nose for government officials with secrets.”

His crusade at time took great personal and financial toll. After suing the Orange Unified School District Board for alleged violations of the Brown Act in 2007, McKee as the losing plaintiff was responsible for paying thousands in attorney’s fees and court costs, forcing McKee to take a lien on his home and suffer garnishment of his wages.

Whether you realize it or not, you owe a great deal to Richard McKee, and you can best honor that debt by getting involved in the governance of your city, your school district, your water district and holding them accountable whenever they stonewall you on information that is rightly yours.

It's become fashionable to complain about too much or too little government on all levels, but 99% of the complaints come from people sitting on sofas in the comforts of their living rooms while the 1% represented by the likes of McKee actually do the heavy lifting. Let's get off our collective lazy duffs and lend a hand.

Monday Morning Mailbag

We received a comment in response to our Saturday post in which we quoted a 2000 California First Amendment Coalition press release regarding the City of Claremont's Black Hole Award. The release included some choice quotes from Karen Rosenthal, Claremont's mayor at the time.

As one reason for the award, the CFAC piece cited Claremont's proposal to station a "mental health professional" at City Council meetings to evaluate the potential dangers presented by speakers during public comment. The professional would have provided the City grounds to have offending speakers removed from the council chambers.

In case you've forgotten, the author of the staff report for that proposal was former Assistant City Manager Bridget Healy, who is chair-elect to the Claremont Chamber of Commerce board and who ran unsuccessfully for council in 2009.

Our reader wrote:

Date: Sat, March 26, 2011 5:28:47 PM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: crazy

"...its short-lived proposal to have mental health professionals standing by to assess the threat level posed by citizen speakers at public meetings..."

My guess is they dropped the proposal to have mental health professionals at city council meetings because the mental health professionals would have been able to witness the behavior of the city council members. "Yes, I was noticing the unstable person at the front of the room who keeps sighing loudly and rolling her eyes when other people speak. Have your officer keep a close eye on that one -- she covers about thirty pages in the DSM-IV."

(Pause)

"Also, about the man on the side of the dais who keeps turning beet red and screaming threats at people..."

At the end of the note, the reader alluded to Bridget Healy's former boss in Claremont and in Indio. Here we see him in all his red-faced glory as he does self-inflicted damage to his reputation:

Do No Harm

Our post about former Claremont mayor Karen Rosenthal upset a reader, who disliked our dredging up something her husband, Michael Rosenthal did to lose his medical license in 2001:

Date: Thu, March 24, 2011 11:43:46 AM
To: claremontbuzz@yahoo.com
Subject: Rosenthal

While the re-emergence of former mayor Rosenthal may be newsworthy, to bring up the near decade-old issue concerning her husband is just plain mean and totally irrelevant. Your humanity has hit a low point. Please apologize to your readers and to Mr. Rosenthal.

We stand by the post, dear reader. Yes, the former Dr. Rosenthal's license revocation happened 10 years ago, but we consider the matter quite relevant because it illustrates the egocentrism and the lack of empathy that the Rosenthals and the Claremont 400 possess still. They have yet to apologize for their own behavior. It's been our contention here at the Insider that the 400 put the citizens of Claremont through the wringer when they ran the town and then played extremely ugly politics when they saw their hold on City Hall weaken.

After the 2005 Preserve Claremont campaign, not one of the hardcore PC backers apologized publicly, even though they were roundly chastised in letters to the Claremont Courier and in several ads taken out by private citizens outraged by the PC witchhunt. In fact, they've continued to be very active in local campaigns.

A prime example is Mrs. Rosenthal, who quietly reentered the local political scene and who served on council member Joe Lyon's campaign committee. Not only did Karen fail to learn anything from the PC mess she and other supporters of Lyons and candidate Robin Haulman borrowed the same strategy this time.

Rosenthal's unapologetic behavior is consistent with the pattern of her public life. Consider the 2000 Black Hole Award the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) gave to Claremont and then-Mayor Rosenthal for their handling of Irvin Landrum shooting and for many other things. A CFAC press release from 2000 said:

Claremont was cited for:

• its refusal to disclose records relating to a lawsuit settlement;
• its protests contrary to fact that a federal court order precluded disclosure,
• its short-lived proposal to have mental health professionals standing by to assess the threat level posed by citizen speakers at public meetings;
• its city manager's disclosure of the criminal records of a man, in order to discredit him, who had called for an investigation of the death of his nephew, shot by police officers;
• its use of council committees to hold unannounced meetings on a variety of matters; and
• its refusal to allow citizens, during a permitted parade, to hand out leaflets to curbside spectators.

CFAC sent a faxed copy of the award citation, with a letter invitation to respond at the Assembly or otherwise, to Mayor Karen Rosenthal. In comments to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario on Sunday, October 15, after the Assembly, she denied having been given notice and dismissed the award as "a public relations scam" and fund-raising effort.

Mayor Rosenthal was not quoted on most of the specifics, but said overall, "They just like to fabricate these very volatile stories out of things that didn't happen or weren't as dastardly as they claim or are unresolved at this time," with the last item apparently referring to a continuing investigation into the shooting. She said the mental health observer was simply a committee recommendation that had not been adopted, and the anti-leafleting restriction was "to prevent littering and disruption of neighborhoods" and had "nothing to do with free speech."

Similarly, the attitude both Rosenthal and her husband demonstrated after Michael Rosenthal lost his medical license was unremorseful, unapologetic. Mr. Rosenthal was more concerned about any harm to wife's reputation than to the patient who lost 2,000 cc of blood during a D & C procedure Mr. Rosenthal performed. The woman later had to have an emergency room hysterectomy. Some things time cannot heal, dear reader.

Mrs. Rosenthal (photo, left) continues to display the same lack of remorse she did publicly as mayor and as Mr. Rosenthal's wife when the news of his license revocation became public. This failure to own up to their past actions occurs repeatedly among the Claremonsters. It's why we at the Insider keep coming back. Every time we think they've finally learned to play nicely and we go into hibernation, this group returns thinking they can turn the clock to 1998, before Landrum, before they started losing elections.

The harm Karen Rosenthal and her fellow 400 members caused cannot be undone, and without some little public act of contrition on the part of the 400, a good segment of the city's voting population will always suspect the Claremonsters of the worst motives in anything or anyone they back.

You are right, dear reader. Apologizing is always a good place to start, but Mrs. Rosenthal and her compatriots are the ones who need to step up and take ownership of their actions. That, unfortunately, is a step they have been incapable of taking.