Golden Eggs

HEADED FOR A FALL

As we said last week, the scandal in the city of Bell will probably end up being a good thing for California municipal governments. Right now, they have to worry about the unusual attention their residents are devoting to cities' financial affairs.

That is, in fact, what's happened in our own town. At the July 27 meeting of the Claremont City Council, Mayor Linda Elderkin went to great lengths to contrast Bell's $100,000 city council annual salaries with Claremont's $4,800 per year for council members. Claremont city staff also made some salaries available online as a show of fiscal transparency.

But in the long run, cities like Claremont will weather the current scrutiny, public attention will fade, the LA Times and other media won't have anywhere near the staff and resources to cover every area of Southern California, and things will revert to the status quo.

Bell represents the far extreme, and their council and city management were caught because they allowed greed to get the better of them. In a town like Claremont, financial losses result from poor decision-making rather than outright fraud or embezzlement, and simply looking at employee and council salaries doesn't begin to capture the full impact of the money flowing out of city coffers.

That kind of financial leakage flourishes on the local level, mostly because, even when citizens are paying attention, elected officials refuse to deal with problems with long time horizons or because city officials refuse to release all of the information needed for a full public accounting.

Consider that July 27 council meeting.

Item number 7 on the consent calendar was a request by staff for the council to adopt a resolution implementing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City and the Claremont Police Management Association. The CPMA agreed to conceding a 1.9% cost of living increase for the current fiscal year and to the implementation of a two-tiered CalPERS pension system. Current safety employees receive a 3% at 50 pension (that is, at the age of 50, 3% of their final year's salary for every year of employment).

In return for those CPMA concessions, the City agreed to continue paying for the employees' 9% CalPERS contribution. You can see the discussion here (at around the 57:40 mark).

Councilmember Peter Yao (photo, right) asked for the MOU to be pulled for discussion. Yao, who has been on top of the City's the unfunded pension liabilities, put that amount in the tens of millions and said that by his personal calculation, it was closer to $50 million. (The Courier and Daily Bulletin later reported the unfunded liabilities as $40 million.)

Yao pointed out that the City doesn't possess $50 million in assets, which Yao said meant that "by definition we're insolvent." Yao's problem with the MOU was that, although it introduces a two-tiered pension system, one for current employees and one for future employees, the MOU defers any actual details of the new pension tier until next year. He added that the new tier wouldn't have any effect on the CalPERS problem for anywhere from 15 to 30 years from now, when new employees would be entering retirement.

We might add, too, that there's a hiring freeze on right now and that could extend for several years if the economy doesn't turn around soon. That means that any savings from the new pension benefits wouldn't apply quite a while.

Yao was also unhappy with council members Elderkin, Sam Pedroza, and Larry Schroeder for their failure to address that 9% employee CalPERS contribution the City continues to cover. Elderkin's and Pedroza's refusal to ask the employees to pick up their own 9% contribution was almost certainly out of self-interest. They, along with Yao, could be campaigning for reelection. Linda and Sam may be figuring there's no sense in angering the employee union gods at this point, even if it imperils the City's solvency.

Schroeder's reluctance to correct the CalPERS problem is more puzzling. Schroeder spent 10 years in banking and 19 years as a finance director for the cities of Lakewood and Glendora. And in the July 27 pension discussion, Schroeder acknowledged that "we do have a pension problem." Should that not be a huge red flag, especially coming from Schroeder?

In the end, Schroeder, perhaps because he himself is a CalPERS pensioner, voted along with Elderkin and Pedroza to implement the MOU. Council member Corey Calaycay voted with Yao against the MOU, citing the City's responsibility to not make promises it cannot keep (an ethical sticking point that has never bothered Elderkin, Pedroza, and the Claremont 400).


THE GOOD LIFE

Today's LA Times had an article in its LA Extra section about concerns that CalPERS authorities failed to notify the California attorney general's office in 2006 when they discovered a 47% increase in Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo's salary while conducting an audit of Bell's .

That increase raised Rizzo's salary to $447,000. According to the Times:

Documents released by CalPERS on Thursday show that the fund was also informed of a 42% raise for the assistant city manager and nearly 38% raise for City Council members. That brought council members' pay to $62,000 by 2005 for part-time jobs that in other small cities pay about $400 per month. The newly released records include Bell's explanation to CalPERS of why its officials were worthy of such salaries.

Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia told CalPERs in writing in October 2006 that the city manager's salary was hiked "to reflect his contributions to the city," which included helping Bell resolve a multimillion-dollar deficit. She said her own pay hike was "provided to reward her for her efforts and new responsibilities" related to a promotion the city had given her.

"It should also be noted that the City Council, also members of the Executive Management classification, were compensated accordingly for their contributions and efforts toward the City's dramatic financial recovery," Spaccia wrote.

The Times said that CalPERS found Bell's documentation sufficient and never did any subsequent audits. CalPERS has already been criticized for using overly optimistic rates of returns in figuring how much local governments and their employees should contribute to their pension accounts. CalPERS has also suffered from a scandal involving a former CalPERS executive and a former board member.

So if you're a public employee, there's no time like the present to retire, if you are eligible. There will be a day of reckoning for California public employee pensions, and chances are that day will arrive sooner rather than later.

One recent retiree familiar to us is former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard. You'll recall that Southard went to Indio for five years following 17 years in Claremont. He retired from Indio earlier this year.

We were curious about Glenn's retirement. It couldn't possibly be near Robert Rizzo's $600,000-plus annual retirement pay. Figuring pensions is guess work, though there is a website called CaliforniaPensionReform.com that does post a searchable database with all of CalPERS' six-figure pensions. Glenn isn't on their yet, but he will be the next time CPR updates its records.

Southard's base salary his last year in Indio was $300,000. That's important because CalPERS uses that last year when figuring retirement payouts. That's why you used to see certain CHP employees putting in a lot of overtime during their last year of work.

We were able to find an estimate on the size of GS's retirement after a reader alerted us to a blog called Inflection Point Diary that had a couple recent posts about Glenn's compensation. IPD carried a thorough breakdown of Southard's Indio contract, which IPD posted along with the analysis.

As IPD notes, most people, including our local papers, only focus on base salaries when they examine public employee compensation. But buried in the details of their contracts are things like bonus agreements that can add a good chunk more to a fellow's pension. IPD reveals that in addition to the $300,000, Indio also agreed to give Southard an annual bonus of up to 10%, or $30,000 for Southard's last year.

The analysis goes on to say that Southard was eligible for a deferred compensation account with an apparent maximum contribution of $16,500 a year, paid entirely by the city of Indio. There's also the matter of unused vacation time, for which Southard also received compensation. In fact, IPD posted a follow-up on Southard that said he cashed out around $80,000 worth of unused vacation during his time in Indio.

IPD also cited a Desert Sun article from February 24 that said in 2008 Indio overpaid by $5,949.52 for 40 hours worth of vacation time he didn't have, an error that wasn't caught until Southard was getting ready to retire.

IPD estimated that Southard's final year's salary could have been closer to $400,000 the the $300,000 base. Upon retirement, the Desert Sun said, Southard was also supposed to get $162,000 for 136 hours of accumulated vacation and sick time. All in all, not a bad payday for a man who left Indio sitting on a $13.5 million budget deficit. Good thing he didn't stick around for his 2010 performance bonus.

It Tolls for Thee - UPDATED

A TAXING SITUATION

The LA Times coverage of municipal salaries in the city of Bell has focused a lot of attention on what had previously been an area examined mainly by gadflies. Local newspapers haven't seemed to care much about such arcana and that lack of scrutiny has allowed city governments, including Claremont's, to dismiss citizen's concerns about such things as city employee and city council compensation.

The excesses in Bell, however, have turned up the heat on city councils everywhere, including our little burg. At Tuesday's meeting of the Claremont City Council, mayor Linda Elderkin felt compelled to point out that Claremont's council members only receive a $400-per-month stipend. Elderkin neglected to mention, however, what she and other council members receive for attending meetings of the Claremont Redevelopment Agency or various regional boards the council members serve on, which is where Bell's council members made the bulk of their nearly $100,000 per year. Still, in Claremont, the total compensation is a fraction of what was seen in Bell, and readers can rest assured that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker doesn't earn anywhere near the $787,000 former Bell City Manager Robert (not to be confused with Ratso "I'm walkin' heeyuh") Rizzo received.

In any case, local cities are now taking steps to distance themselves from Bell, hence Mayor Elderkin's characteristically blissful lack of self-reflection when she declaimed Tuesday night, "We are not in the realm of the Bell councils." As usual, the obtuse Elderkin missed the point entirely. It's not that Claremont's level of veniality can begin to approach that of Bell's. What ever corruption we have here isn't at all of the same sort as Bell. We're not paying exorbitant salaries and benefits for corrupt officials. Rather, here we pay a premium, a stupidity tax, for want of a better term. It's why we four years ago Claremont's ruling class, the Claremont 400, tried to institute a $45 million assessment district to pay for a $12 million parcel of open space.

Our city's mistakes may not be criminal in nature, but they can be costly. Casual observers of our town see what a wonderful place it appears to be, but they don't understand that the same sense of wonder could have been achieved for a fraction of the costs - costs that include untenable employee pension obligations and unneeded or extravagant city services.


ADVICE OF COUNSEL

We also noticed that Bell's city attorney, Robert Lee, didn't escape criticism. The LA Times reported in today's edition that the city of Downey, which also employs Lee, is ending its contract with him and his firm, Best, Best & Krieger, simply because they don't want to risk being associated with the Bell scandal.

As the Times article noted, city attorneys have a tough balancing act. They have to represent the interests of the citizens of the municipalities they work for but only so far as those interests are represented by officials elected by those same citizens - that is, the city council members. So, what happens when a council acts illegally, unethically, or irresponsibly? Should a city attorney speak up publicly, should they resign, or should they be supportive of the council?

The idea that a city attorney doesn't represent citizens directly but rather represents the council majority is one that informs our own city attorney Sonia Carvalho's legal philosophy. Coincidentally, Carvalho also works for Best, Best & Krieger and has also once worked for a city, Colton in her case, that had council members who were subjects of a federal corruption probe about 10 years ago.

Carvalho's legal advice isn't always reserved for the controlling majority of the city council. It sometimes extends to free legal opinions for the Claremont 400, as it did in 2007 when Mayor Elderkin was first running for council. At that time, one of the big issues was the possibility that Vulcan Materials Co. might begin gravel mining operations on land in northeast Claremont. Elderkin had a potential conflict of interest in any city business with Vulcan because her husband Rick is a Pomona College mathematics professor. Pomona College had a small ownership interest in the land Vulcan was interested in.

When that potential conflict became an issue in the 2007 campaign, Elderkin sought and received an opinion from Carvalho that Elderkin faced no conflict of interest. Carvalho, who didn't provide legal consultations to any other 2007 council candidates, did give Elderkin a freebie. Carvalho's legal opinion should at least have been reported as an in-kind campaign contribution, but Elderkin couldn't even be troubled to do that much.

(By the way, state attorney general's office, tell us again why you didn't look into that?)

We believed then, as we do now, that Claremont and every other city in California would be best served finding city attorneys whose philosophies of governance incorporate a greater concern for the actual town citizens, not just the controlling majority of the five elected city officials and the people who in turn control those council members.


BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

One other Bell-related item on the LA Times' LA Now blog was a report that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for cities to post the salaries of top officials online.

On this issue, the Insider was way ahead of the curve. Almost three years ago, we obtained and shared the city of Claremont's payroll information from the city's online document archive. The information was posted in the form of pay stub information.

Our advice to Governor Schwarzenegger on this one: tread lightly. For our having posted that very public information, City Attorney Carvalho contacted Google, which hosts our blog, and threatened to take them to court if they did not remove the pay stub information immediately. Carvalho falsely accused the Insider of having stolen the information. Then, after the theft accusations were shown to be false, she claimed the pay stubs could not be posted because they were protected by copyright laws (also a false legal theory).

The Daily Bulletin ended up posting an image of one of the pay stubs themselves, after redacting all the personal information. The Bulletin, unlike the Insider, did not receive any nasty-grams from Carvalho, who did have a heapin' portion of crow to chew on in the aftermath of Paystubgate.

The Claremont pay stub information, incidentally, showed that our city employees were compensated quite well, especially after one includes things like bonuses and benefits - information that the city has never been willing to release and information that is supposed to be public, according to California law.


UPDATED, 2:15PM:

A reader contacted us and noted that yesterday's weekly report from City Manager Jeff Parker had the news that Claremont had started posting the salaries of top city officials, including Parker and the city council, on the City's website. Here's what Parker's report said:

CLAREMONT ADMINISTRATIVE AND COUNCIL SALARY INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

As the media reports on the City of Bell's salaries for council and administrative staff, residents across the country are discussing the compensation of their own City officials. In accordance with the City of Claremont's open communication philosophy, the City of Claremont makes this information readily available to the public.

Each member of the City Council receives $400 per month compensation and an additional $30 per Redevelopment Agency meeting. The City Council does not receive retirement benefits and during the 2010-12 budget process, medical benefits were eliminated from council's budget. City commissioners are appointed by the City Council and receive no compensation.

As detailed in the budget, the City Manager's annual salary is $211,000 and the Assistant City Manager's annual salary is $165,000. The Police Chief's annual salary is $174,000. These salaries are based on surveys of comparable cities with similar services and populations to Claremont's 37,000 residents. Cities surveyed include Upland, Brea, La Verne, Glendora, Arcadia, Azusa, Covina, Rialto, Montclair, Monrovia, and Chino.

A complete list of salary ranges for each City position is available upon request through the City Clerk's office. For additional information, please call the City Manager's Office at 909-399-5441

Parker fails to inform the public that transparency only goes so far. We still don't get any information on bonuses and benefits, which together constitute a good chunk of total employee compensation.

According to another LA Times article on Bell, the idea of posting the salary information was supposed to be discussed in Sacramento yesterday at a meeting of city managers hosted the League of California Cities. The public disclosure is one action the League thinks will mute the public's ire over the Bell situation. It also shows that the League is more concerned with the plight of city employees than with the concerns of actual citizens.

The Times described the purpose of the meeting as "damage control," which implies the League wants to put its spin on the story rather than considering whether Bell is an extreme example of a wider malaise. The League is an interest group like any other, and its interests lie in preserving as much of the status quo as possible, to the greater detriment of the people who have to actually pay municipal bills.

Chef Jeff Gets a Tip

Look for the City Council to leave a little on the table for the chef at Council meeting tomorrow, December 11, 2007. The agenda report says that he will find another $17,764 in his pay envelope as an increase to his annual salary. In addition, he will receive a one-time payment for his meritorious service of $9,300. Total: $27,064.

The new salary, exclusive of the nice bonuses that seem to rain down predictably, will be $205,000 effective November 30. There are approximately 35,000 residents in Claremont. Did YOU get $7 in value from City Manager Jeff Parker?

We wonder whether it was the great work on the Johnson's Pasture purchase that earned Parker the bonus and the raise. Or whether it was his reaction--calling in Interpol, the NKVD, the Secret Service, and the Stasi--to our modest efforts at exposing the salaries of city employees. (No, Linda Elderkin reported in the Courier that that subject did not come up.) Well, there must be something good that he did. We will be interested to hear it at the council meeting tomorrow night.

Hey, at least he has a degree from a recognized university.

Claremont Follies

City Attorney Action

We got to thinking about the Claremont City Attorney Sonia Carvalho's use of attorney-client privilege as a rationale for her refusal to release a copy of her complaint to Google about our "Labor Day" post. Carvalho's refusal came after
reporter Will Bigham at the Daily Bulletin requested the complaint.

A question for the lawyers among us: Can Carvalho assert a privilege of confidentiality for a third-party communication, one not between herself and her client (the city of Claremont)?


Daily Bulletin, Freedom Friday

The Daily Bulletin continued its coverage of the issue today with a front page, above-the-fold article skewering Carvalho's confidentiality argument. The Bulletin's graphic consisted a small stack of the pay stubs in questions with the names redacted.

The article, again by Bigham, is part of the Bulletin's ongoing Freedom Friday series. In the piece, Carvalho continues her revolving door reasons for withholding the information, having moved from the pay stubs are confidential to the stubs are copyrighted and, today, to asserting the privacy rights of city employees:

City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said the pay stubs contained private, personal information such as references to survivor benefits, use of vacation and sick time, and information on life-insurance benefits.

"Details as to how that employee directs his or her money - be it to a retirement plan, or to a union for dues, or for reimbursement for a holiday party - should not be released to the public for inspection and discussion," Carvalho said.

Public records experts interviewed by Bigham disputed Carvalho's contentions about the stubs:

But according to public- records experts who considered, item by item, the information included on city pay stubs, the documents are a public record that the city would be required to release upon request - with fewer redactions than Carvalho indicates should be made.

The pay stubs include a "grouping of little factoids about various little entitlements that (employees) have from the city, which says nothing about them as human beings or as city employees," said Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware.

The article pointed out as an example that the pay stub for City Manager Jeff Parker, one of two that we posted, contained no personal identifying information (Social Security numbers, dates of birth, etc....). It did quote Peter Scheer, executive director for the California First Amendment Coalition, as saying that bank routing numbers for the city's bank account might have to be redacted.


The Blogosphere Reacts

The story seemed to gain some traction in the Blogosphere and with journalists, two groups with huge stakes in the matter.

The USC Annenberg School of Journalism weighed in yesterday with a piece by Robert Niles questioning the city's copyright claim.

And the Foothill Cities blog has a great piece on the troubling way in which Google caved in to the city of Claremont and pulled the plug on the pay stubs without looking into the substance of the city's complaint. (Still no response from Google to our inquires into the exact text of Claremont's complaint.)

There's also a lively discussion on the FC post.

We've also received a lot of email, which we hope to get to this weekend.


Claremont PD Readies for Action

Meanwhile, we haven't been able to confirm if the Claremont Police Department has decided to activate it's vaunted CodeRed system in an effort to deal with Paystubgate.

Paystubgate: Latest News

A few new links on the Claremont employee salary story:

• The Daily Bulletin has a update brief update - the city looks to sue somebody, anybody. Nothing like a little malicious prosecution to spice up the day.
  


• Tony Krickl in yesterday's Claremont Courier also covered the story. (Sorry, this one's not posted on the Courier's website.)
  


• Courier reader Chris Bray (and former Courier reporter) offers some perspective in a letter to the Courier.
  
  

Slopping at the Public Trough--Claremont Employees

One thing that amazes the naif when going through the December 2006 City of Claremont pay stubs (See our "Labor Day" post below) is the inventive variety of ways the City employees have found to tap the public keg. We realize this post has its limitations--among them lack of context--but we are pretty sure no confidentiality or copyright issues are involved in merely listing most if not all of the "Earnings" categories found by reviewing all of the pay stubs.

Below, we list for your enjoyment all or nearly all of the categories we found, along with typical amounts paid. We tried to ensure that the amount listed was neither the highest nor the lowest we found, but was more or less representative in amount. All amounts are Year To Date for all of 2006 for a single (representative) employee.

This represents a compendium of more than 200 employees (for a city of 35,000). Where we are inclined, we make editorial comment. Don't expect anything too intelligent. Remember, we are not public employee compensation specialists; to hear the city tell it, we are low-life borderline criminals.

Admin Leave, $2,109.01
Admin Leave Mandatory, $1,006.50
Admin Leave Payoff, $2,291.08. We don't really understand any of these Administrative Leave items. And why would someone get an Admin Leave Payoff? Is a certain amount of Admin Leave a right?
Auto Allowance, $4,200. Lots and lots of employees get this. Amounts differ.
Bereavement Leave, $122.21
Bilingual Pay, $750.00
Comp Time Payoff, $1,612.02. If you don't use your Compensatory Time Off, looks like you get paid for it.
Comp Time Used, $3,209.73
Court 1.0, $451.08
Court 1.5, 1,224.91. Most of the policemen are smart enough to go to court when they get paid time and a half.
CPMA Longevity Pay, $5340.40. Lots of the senior policemen appear to receive this.
CRA [Claremont Redevelopment Agency] Board Comp, $600.00. For the councilmembers.
Education Incentive, $3,750.00. Knowledge must not be its own reward.
Family Sick Leave, $7,073.11
Floating Holiday, $1,328.17. We've heard of this, but no one we know gets this benefit.
Hol Payoff, $164.88
Holiday Pay, $1,540.43
Holiday Regular, $4,363.81
Incentive Bonus, $1,000. This seems to be like a signing bonus, but we aren't sure.
Jury Duty, $392.97
Motor Pay, $375.00. For riding that Harley.
On Call CS, $6740.00. Several policemen really score on this one. Not a clue as to what it's for.
Other, $7,227.98. Several employees got large amounts this way. Guess they had seven grand left over when the pay was handed out.
Other Pay-Correction, $1,768.40
Overtime 1.0, $433.35
Overtime 1.5, $11,956.63. What good is overtime if it can't be time and a half?
Part time Hourly
Part time w/PERS, $7,551.96. You can be part-time and still get the employee retirement system.
PD Reserve, $280
Performance Bonus $7,430.55. Oh, there were lots and lots of these; more in a later post.
Physical Reimbursement, $1,200. Reimbursement for running shoes and memberships at The Club. The Insider pays his own way.
Regular Pay, $57,638.40
Reg Training 105%, $32.98
Retro Pay, $4,437.92. This one is a mystery. Most employees get it. And it's usually hundreds or thousands of dollars for the year. The total over all of 2006 is very large. More later.
Shoot Pay, $95.47
Shoot Pay 1.5, $692.37. Again, most cops are smart enough to do their shooting when they are paid time and a half.
Sick, $2839.05
Sick Leave Bereavement $2,074.51
Sick Payoff, $950.93
Special Detail, $779.96. We think this is guarding the council meetings, and similar important duties.
Technology Reimbursement, $3,000.00. Usually $1,500 max, but one employee scored three grand.
Uniform Pay, $480.00
Uniform Pay/PERS. Do they pay retirement on your uniform?
Vacation, $9,634.51
Vacation Bonus, $1,748.97. What is this? Nice to get, though.
Vacation Part Time, $1,205.35. Maybe the same part-timers getting retirement also get vacation.
Vacation Payoff
Workers Comp, $33,277.96

Insider to Blogger: Huh?

Monday Afternoon

Our odyssey into the inner workings of Claremont City Hall and Google's Blogger began last Friday with our posting of city employee salaries and benefits, along with scanned images of the pay stubs for Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker and city Human Services Director Jeff Porter.

Over the weekend, the city complained loud and long with false allegations that the Insider had somehow stolen the information or had obtained it through a leak in city hall. In fact, the information was posted all along on the city's on-line archive (which has since been taken off-line).

The city attorney last Friday apparently contacted Google, which operates the Blogger site that hosts the Insider. City Attorney Sonia Carvalho never tried contacting us directly with the city's concerns about our post, so we do not know the specifics, other than some unsubstantiated allegations that the post contained confidential city employee information.

Friday's post stayed up all weekend, but on Monday afternoon, after the story had gotten legs, we received the following email from Blogger:

from Blogger Help

date Sep 10, 2007 3:06 PM
subject [#197705772] Blogger complaint received
mailed-by trakken.google.com

Hello,

We'd like to inform you that we've received a complaint that your blog claremontca.blogspot.com contains confidential information. Please note that our Terms of Service prohibit posting confidential items on your blog. Accordingly, we have had to remove the content in question.

Please refer to our Terms of Service for more details:
http://beta.blogger.com/terms.g

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

So, according to Blogger, the offending material was confidential in nature. Okay, but still no specific information on what was confidential. Clear as mud, as they say.


Monday Evening

On Monday evening, we responded to the Blogger note requesting the specifics of the complaint and advised Blogger that we contended that none of the information in the post was confidential. We pointed out the lack of personal identifiers in the post, and the fact that public employee salaries are public information in California. We also reminded Blogger that the source of the "confidential" information was the city of Claremont's own, very public on-line archive.

Here is our response to Blogger:

to Blogger Help
date Sep 10, 2007 7:35 PM
subject Re: [#197705772] Blogger complaint received

Blogger Support,

Could you be a little more specific about the "confidential" information you referred to. The content was obtained from the City of Claremont's online document archive, so it was public information, free for anyone to look up. Additionally, there were no Social Security numbers, dates of birth, bank account information, or other such personal data. There was salary and bonus information for public employees at the city of Claremont. However, in California, that is public information:

http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/High-Court-Makes-California-Officer-Salaries-Public/1$37599

Please review the actual post and advise what specific items are confidential. Again, we do not believe anything posted can be considered confidential, especially since the source is the city of Claremont's own public records archive available to anyone with an Internet connection - or at least until they decided they didn't like our post, at which point they removed access to the site:

http://www.ci.claremont.ca.us/ps.fyi.cfm?ID=1805

Thank you for looking into this matter.

We went ahead and reposted the Friday piece, minus the pay stub images, which seemed to be the most concern to the city and waited for an explanation from Blogger.


Tuesday Noon

On Tuesday at high noon, we heard back from Blogger. Their note informed us that the problem wasn't confidentiality at all. The pay stubs were copyrighted by the city, so their images can not be reproduced without the city's okay.

But that's not been what the city has said in any of its public statements or on its own website. According to the the city, the problem has been the confidentiality issue. Yet, Blogger tells us it's a copyright issue.

Well, folks, which is it? Here's the Blogger response:

from Blogger Help
date Sep 11, 2007 12:02 PM
subject Re: [#197705772] Blogger complaint received
mailed-by trakken.google.com

Hello,

We have removed your post due to the images of the paycheck stub of the City of Claremont, which in actuality is their copyrighted material. If you would like to reload the post that we removed, feel free to do so as long as you leave out the images of the paycheck.

Thank you for your understanding in this regard.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Today's News

Will Bigham in today's Daily Bulletin had an article on the subject. Mayor Peter Yao continues with the false hints that the pay stub information somehow obtained through subterfuge:

...attempts by the city to duplicate the search yielded no pay stubs, said Mayor Peter Yao, fueling concerns that the documents may have been obtained by other means.

Hint to Mayor Yao: Go to your archive search engine and try typing: "Jeff Parker performance." It's not rocket science, Peter.

Meanwhile, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho and City Manager Parker have stolen the "hide-the-ball" page from the playbook of Parker's predecessor, Glenn Southard, the article reported:

In an interview Tuesday, Carvalho would not elaborate on her communication with Google and refused to release the city's e-mail correspondence with the company, citing attorney-client privilege.

Carvalho said the city was withholding the e-mail correspondence because city litigation against Google remains a possibility if the company fails in the future to respond if the blog re-posts copies of the pay stubs.

[In other words, Carvalho will withhold the information indefinitely.]

.....

Parker and Carvalho refused to discuss whether the city argued in its correspondence with Google that the city pay stubs were copyrighted documents.

As one occasional Insider reader of a legal mind would say, "I'm ready to rule."

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Down into the rabbit hole of secrecy goes Claremont while the local ACLU chapter and all those fair weather civil libertarians on the City Council, in the Claremont League of Women Voters, in the once progressive Pilgrim Place retirement community, and the in local Democratic Club twiddle their thumbs.

Claremont Secrets

What Are They Hiding?

No, that sound of metal on stone you hear isn't the beginning of gravel mining in Northeast Claremont. It's the sound of the City Hall portcullis slamming shut as the Claremont 400 and city staff cut off all on-line access to city documents.

The city's reaction came last Friday afternoon after our Labor Day post laid out a sample of what Claremont citizens are really paying the people at City Hall.


City Cries, "THEFT!" (Wolf)

As might be expected from city staff, a cry of "Theft!" went out. But there was not theft or even leak of information. All the information we obtained was done on the up-and-up on the city's public, on-line website archive. In response, the city restricted public access to those documents:



The city posted an explanation of the on-line public access change late yesterday. The city seemed to back off its claims of theft and in their press release stated:

...recent activities have demonstrated that there has been a breach of confidential documents.

Notice no mention of hacking or theft. Just the usual vague, passive-voice bureaucratese convenient for evading specifics. No explanation of what was confidential, no proof of any breach at all.


City Attorney Acts


After stewing this past weekend over the Insider's posting of Claremont city employees' salaries and bonuses, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho sent a complaint to Google, which hosts our humble blog. We received an email from Google advising us of the complaint. Google did not forward us the actual complaint, which is also public record in California.

Oddly, Carvalho did not contact us directly, and the Google note did not say what exactly was confidential. The pay stubs, after all, were on-line, and they contained no personal identifiers - no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal bank account information. They only contained full names and payroll information.

It's important to note that the California Supreme Court ruled just last week that public employee salaries are public information. We hope the city attorney was completely truthful about the sourcing of the information in her note to Google, and we also hope that she didn't make the wild sort of false accusations of theft of information that staff was making last week.

However, out of respect for Carvalho's concerns, we reposted our Friday Labor Day note minus the pay stub images. If the City or Carvalho have any concerns about the information contained in that post, we ask that they contact us directly at claremontbuzz@yahoo.com with any specific complaints.


Daily Bulletin Coverage

Will Bigham has been on this story since last Friday, and he had a follow-up story in today's Bulletin.

The article said that city staffers were unable to confirm the fact that we here at the Insider found the payroll information on the city's website. (Guys, how hard is that? Just go on your document archive search engine and type "Jeff Parker salary" or "Jeff Parker pay.")

City Manager Parker was cited it the article as having concerns about low-level employees' salaries being posted, but as Bigham noted, all public employee salaries and compensation are public information. The public is, after all, the employer here - you pay the bill, you should know how much you're paying. The article, quoting Terry Francke at the California First Amendment Coalition, reported:

...the California Supreme Court ruled that all compensation information about all California public employees is a matter of public record, Francke said.

Councilman Corey Calaycay, who works full time as a district representative for state Sen. Bob Margett, said he "has little sympathy" for public employees who do not want information on their compensation publicly available.

Calaycay's salary is listed in the online database of the Capitol Weekly, a Sacramento newspaper that covers state politics.

On the Capitol Weekly site, you can do a search by job title, secretary, say, and find a whole list of state-employed secretaries along with their salaries, so we don't buy Parker's claimed concern about the posting of low-level employee salaries at all.

The bottom-line here is Claremont's reverting to its old ways of hiding information because of the embarrassment factor. In this, so-called liberals such as Mayor Pro-Tem Ellen Taylor and Councilmember Sam Pedroza have no qualms about rolling back the openness that Claremont has displayed in the past two years.

Expect more of the same in the future.

The Claremont 12-Step

We've long thought Claremont and its city government (elected and appointed officials as well as paid staff) have had a co-dependent relationship. So, the following reader response to our posts the past few days regarding city salaries and benefits seemed to make a lot of sense:

Actually, Jeff Parker makes $187,000 per year in straight salary as he got a raise (on a 3-2 vote) in December 2006 which probably did not take effect until January 2007. If you readers want to get the salaries of all the Claremont employees by name and exact salary but not benefits, they can make a public records request by phone, e-mail or in writing to the city clerk's office and they will be more than happy to assist. I think you will find that Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos is making much more than you have him making.

Also, I would suggest that your readers go to the website of the California First Amendment Coalition , cfac.org , and click on their 2007 Conference being held at USC in October and fill out a form to nominate the Claremont Insider for a Beacon Award (the cfac site explains what that is) and the city of Claremont for a Darkness Award (formerly called the "Black Hole Award" which our #5 best city in the country won in 2000). The deadline for nominations is Sept. 28th. They now have another award called the Bill Farr award after a L.A. Times reporter who went to jail rather than reveal his sources. Take a look at the CFAC website and make your voices heard. Thank you to the Claremont Insider for an excellent use of public documents.

Just when you thought the City of Claremont was reforming itself and recovering from its dependence on secrecy and subterfuge, they fall off the wagon. Addictions ARE hard to overcome. Maybe there should be a Betty Ford -type clinic for this, and with the generous benefits that we seem to be giving our employees, especially the management staff, they could well afford to pay for the rehab.

Come to think of it, an intervention might do this town a lot of good.

Much Ado, Much Finger Pointing

The furor and finger pointing going on at Claremont City Hall over the salary information we posted on Friday has us scratching our heads here at the Insider. As we noted yesterday, there was no cloak-and-dagger involved. The source of the information was the city's own online document archives.

What happened was that we were working on a post about former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard's recent raise to $300,000 per year at his current job in Indio. We were wondering how that compared to current Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker's salary, so we went onto the city's document archive and did a search for "Jeff Parker salary" or something along those lines.

What popped up were the scanned-in bi-monthly pay stubs for all city employees going back several years. This information was in PDF form for anyone connected to the Internet to see. Now, you would think that anything posted in such a way, mixed in among all the other city commission and city council minutes and agenda materials, was simply public information. Why else would the city post it?

So, it was odd to read Will Bigham's article Saturday on the whole brouhaha.

According to Saturday's Daily Bulletin:

City officials said Friday that there had been no public-records request or release related to the information on the blog, meaning that either the information was leaked by a staff member, or the city's computer system was hacked by an outside party.

But no public information request was needed. It was on the city's website! No hacking, no leaking, just going on and doing a simple search. The city must have known that the source was their own website because Friday - before the Bigham article came out - they removed access to their document archive. The Bigham article quoted Parker:

"However it got into the hands of the blog, there was a theft involved, and that concerns me greatly," Parker said. "I'm going to look into starting an investigation into the potential theft of that information."

Parker told Bigham that he had contacted Police Chief Paul Cooper regarding an investigation into the matter. He might save some time and just have someone check the public records document archives.

We just wonder how much of this the city already realizes. After all, as we have pointed out, they quickly took steps to remove access to the online archive. All of this talk about theft strikes us as a lot of smoke-blowing by an embarrassed city of Claremont trying to cover up its own foolishness. See the Foothills Cities blog for more commentary on the matter.

Claremont v. Claremont

The Inland Daily Bulletin has an article online concerning the Great Claremont Salary Leak. Reporter Will Bigham does a nice job rounding up comment. We urge you to read the whole piece, but can't resist some excerpts:

The pay stub contains private information that the city would not be required to release upon request, said City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, putting the city in a position to be sued by any staff member whose privacy was compromised. [look for the lawsuit soon: Claremont v. Claremont.]

[City Manager Jeff] Parker said late Friday that he plans to investigate how the information was leaked and said he had contacted Police Chief Paul Cooper about the possibility that the document had been stolen.

Carvalho said Friday afternoon that she had contacted the legal department at Google, which hosts the Claremont Insider blog, to request that the private information in the post be removed.

Sonia must have been busy yesterday. She really got her knickers in a knot and went tattling to teacher. But so far the Google Gods have permitted our modest effort to live on in cyber-space.

"I'm not happy because I don't think it's information that should be on any kind of Web site, or a blog in this case," [Parker] added.

Don't shoot the messenger. Matt Hawkesworth is the one keeping the records in the on-line City Document Archive, not us.

"However it got into the hands of the blog, there was a theft involved, and that concerns me greatly," Parker said. "I'm going to look into starting an investigation into the potential theft of that information." [Will they be getting Columbo, or Inspector Clouseau?]

Parker would not comment when asked whether he would consider legal action against the city if it's determined that a city staff member was the source of the leak.

Maybe the lawsuit will be Parker v. Parker.

(The Insider got brief mention today on the Foothill Cities blog. The link is worth your while because it raises the point, once more, that there is a real public interest in disclosing public employee compensation.)

True Source of City Salary Information, or "They Left Their Website Unattended"

Time for the ol' Insider to come clean. We didn't wake up Friday morning in the Claremont City Hall dumpster. Really. Just having a little fun with folks. Doesn't anyone read carefully anymore? What do the words, "Picture", "Imagine", and "Visualize" mean?

We've gotten a lot of inquiries as to where we really got the 2006 City salary information. Fact is--we are not fooling this time--we got it from the City website in the City Documents Archive. It was public information, put on a public website by the City, and available to anyone who took the trouble to look. It seems the City saves a document with page scans of all pay stubs and they even index it.

We'd like to say, with Casey Stengel, "you could look it up." But you can't anymore.

The City has apparently figured out that its own website was the source of the information, and in the usual Claremont spirit of open government has locked out access to the document archive. Here is a screen shot made Friday evening:


In case you have trouble reading it, the text says:

City Documents Archive...DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES ACCESS TO CERTAIN CITY DOCUMENT ARCHIVES WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. THE CURRENT COUNCIL MEETING AGENDA MATERIALS ARE STILL AVAILABLE.

We believe there is a very real public purpose served by open disclosure of the compensation paid civil servants. The California Supreme Court agreed in a decision published only last week: “Openness in government is essential to the functioning of democracy,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the Court. “The public has a strong, well- established interest in the amount of salary paid to public employees.”

When you review our "Labor Day" post of Friday, especially as it is augmented, we believe you will find the amounts paid to public employees simply to be huge.

(Please see the Labor Day post below. We are adding to it at the bottom as often as time and requests permit)

Labor Day

Editor's Note: We were contacted by Google on the evening of Monday, 9/11/07, regarding the images we posted from the online Claremont City Documents Archive. The Claremont City Attorney, Sonia Carvalho, had contacted Google to complain that the post contained confidential information.

The city did not contact this blog, nor have we been told what information in the documents is confidential - there were no Social Security numbers, no dates of birth, no personal identifiers. The documents only contained name and pay information. What praytell was the top secret information that must be hidden from the public? Salary? Bonuses? But all of that is public information in the state of California.

Until all this can be sorted out, we're posting the text of our Labor Day post minus the images in question. We maintain the city claims of confidentiality for the information posted on their website are baseless.

If the city or the City Attorney has any qualms about the information posted (sans images), they are free to contact us directly at claremontbuzz@yahoo.com with their concerns, and we will consider their complaints after reviewing with our counsel.

_______________________


Picture if you will the buff and ripped form of the Insider stealthily vaulting over over the edge of the Claremont City Hall dumpster in the foggy hours of the morning. Imagine the dark-clad form valiantly rooting through the leftovers from the staff refrigerator and what appears to be drug paraphernalia (whether from the upstairs restroom as reported at a recent City Council meeting, in anticipation of the new Claremont Marijuana Dispensary, or tossed in by a passerby, we are not sure). Visualize the muscling-aside of plastic bags filled with the earthly remains of all sorts of Official City Business. It is a dirty task, but down in the corner, stuck to the inside of the container by an unrecognizable and unmentionable goo, is a sheaf of 2006 City pay stubs. We flip through. Yes, they all are there: Parker, Ramos, Desatnik, Gubman--Yao and McHenry, even Hany Hanna. Our City Hall mole has done well. We carefully replace the sheaf of stubs with a huge bundle of cash. Our mission complete, the shadowy form gracefully leaves the dumpster and swiftly melts into the morning, making a beeline for the computer to post this entry.

Here are some of the highlights of the drop, just a sampling. If you have a favorite staff member, and we have the information, just shoot us an email and we will post it here. As a class, these folks have truly figured out how to "do well by doing good."(Note that the total for earnings may include all sorts of additional pay and allowances such as "fitness", "automobile", "performance bonus", in addition to base pay. All numbers are as of 12/22/06, and are that year to date.)

• Christopher Bradley, $103,519.72 in earnings plus $57,980.80 in benefits
  


• Jason Walters, $94,638.50 in earnings plus $51,750.75 in benefits
  


• Alison Martinez, $53,850.68 in earnings plus $26,347.51 in benefits
  
  
• Rachel Fagg, $5,191.03 in earnings plus $412.72 in benefits
  


• Sandra Baldonado, $5,370.12 in earnings plus $292.79 in benefits
  
  
• Corey Calaycay, $5,400.12 in earnings plus $294.42 in benefits
  


• Ellen Taylor, $5,370.12 in earnings plus $11,409.48 in benefits
  


• Peter Yao, $5,400.12 in earnings plus $11,270.51 in benefits
  
  
• Jaquelin McHenry, $5400.12 in earnings plus $294.42 in benefits
  
  
• Jeffrey Parker, $176,268.38 in earnings plus $75,513.17 in benefits
  
  
• Loretta Flores, $67,091.40 in earnings plus $30,135.38 in benefits
  
  
• Lynne Pahner, $102,015.33 in earnings plus $39,142.71 in benefits
  
  
• Anthony Ramos, $132,758.50 in earnings plus $42,838.41 in benefits [from pay stub]
  
  Correction: as much as $177,000 in annualized earnings and at least $48,000 in annualized benefits.
  
  (as an Alert Reader points out, Assistant City Manager Ramos certainly earned more than $132,758.50 on an annualized basis. His December two-week regular pay was $5883.26 in December 2006; this annualizes to approximately $153,000, not the $108,592 shown in the "year to date" column on the pay stub. Thus, the above earnings are shy by some $45,000 in regular pay, and the benefits appear to be shy by some $5,000 at least. We don't follow such things in detail, but assume the discrepancy comes because Ramos was not a Claremont employee for all of 2006.)
  


• Colin Tudor, $50,381.13 in earnings plus $25,504.86 in benefits
  
  
• Juanita Juster, $64,013.95 in earnings plus $30,862.06 in benefits
  


• Matthew Hawkesworth, $116,486.84 in earnings plus $39,685.32 in benefits
  


• Craig Bradshaw, $129,910.63 in earnings plus $48,520.50 in benefits
  


• Greg Gubman, $80,188.82 in earnings plus $34,842.41 in benefits
  
  
• Loretta Mustafa, $43,022.95 in earnings plus $18,630.66 in benefits
  


• Lisa Prasse, $107,019.66 in earnings plus $42,914.39 in benefits
  


• Maria Tipping, $75,451.43 in earnings plus $35,525.89 in benefits
  
  
• Roy Brown, $197,059.85 in earnings plus $95,677.73 in benefits
  


• Paul Cooper, $147,312.79 in earnings plus $90,030.74 in benefits
  
  
• Charles Farritor, $6,858.45 in earnings plus $373.84 in benefits
  
  
• Hany Hanna, $0 in earnings plus $11,412.80 in benefits
  


• Stanley Van Horn, $127,260.74 in earnings plus $79,058.51 in benefits
  


• Scott Carroll, $111,754.70 in earnings plus $38,538.41 in benefits
  


• William Pallotto, $80,827.14 in earnings plus $34,557.91 in benefits
  


• Mercedes Santoro, $90,310.77 in earnings plus $39,711.70 in benefits
  
  
• Brian Desatnik, $111,846.06 in earnings plus $43,450.38 in benefits
  


• Anthony Witt, $148,223.77 in earnings plus $51,532.43 in benefits
  
  By Request:
  
  
• Isabelle Newman, $98,399,36 in earnings plus $40,997.94 in benefits
  
  
• Shawna Urban, $86,535.59 in earnings plus $35,742.90 in benefits
  


• Duane Marks, $114,654.48 in earnings plus $46,725.96 in benefits
  
  
• Shelley Vander Veen, $102,562.15 in earnings plus $65,775.70 in benefits
  

More (Posted on Saturday)...

Jeff Porter, the latest director of Human Services who has just reorganized his shop and promoted everyone, came to Claremont in late 2006 and therefore the stubs don't reflect a full year for him. What is shown that for a two week pay period, he received $5193.94 which annualizes to approximately $135,042 in base pay. Then there is the $450 per month automobile allowance for an additional $5400. He also received physical re-imbursement and additional holiday pay. It is fair to guess that his annual earnings would have been in the $150,000 region, easy.

Porter's benefits annualize to something like $50,000 and include some $30,000 annualized to the PERS (retirement) system and $20,000, more or less, in various insurances.

Another $200,000 man.


Sunday, brief update...

See the elaboration above for Assistant City Manager Tony Ramos. Apparently we had "misunderestimated" him. A tip of the Insider Beret to an Alert Reader for this.