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.

* * *

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.

Robbing from the Rich (and Poor), Paying City Hall

A reader pointed us to yesterday's Claremont Courier's letters to the editor. In particular, the reader wanted us to see a letter sent in response to Dean McHenry's recent Op-Ed piece about the irony of the juxtaposition of Claremont's centennial celebration with Paystubgate and the governmental secrecy (BlackOps?) practiced in closed session and other matters.

The letter writer, one William Rook, thinks Claremont's city government is building a fiefdom, complete with serfs - taxpayers.

Rook takes the city to task for the $17.5 million paid out by Claremont's insurer for the homes burnt down in Palmer Canyon and Padua Hills in the 2003 Grand Prix fire. Rook concludes by saying:

This [city's] government sounds like it is being run by Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. Maybe we as the people should gather in Nottingham Wilderness Park and take to wearing Claremont green, (complete with appropriate lettering claiming our place as 5th best). Then they could send the code enforcement officer to cite us for illegal use of park property.

Money to Burn

We've been meaning to get around to a couple other items that have surfaced at recent City Council meetings, but Paystubgate has kept us pretty busy.

One of these other stories is the action pushed by Claremont Mayor Peter Yao at the September 25th City Council meeting to dedicate the anticipated transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue from the new Hotel Casa 425 to funding programs for the homeless.

Tony Krickl in the Claremont Courier reported on the Council's discussion on the topic.

(Check out the article - there's a large photo of a group of Claremont homeless milling about the Casa 425 courtyard illustrating the extent of the problem.)

According to the article, city staff estimated the city's anticipated TOT revenue from the Casa 425 to be around $60,000. Staff also claimed that approximately 10% of the kids in Claremont schools are "without a permanent home." The article quoted Claremont 400 stalwart Sue Likens as saying that "it's shocking to think that nearly 500 of our young people are homeless."

But is that number really accurate? As Councilmember Ellen Taylor pointed out during the council's discussion, the Claremont School District includes kids living with relatives or living out of motels as among those without permanent homes. So, we're not talking about a Dickensian scene of 500 homeless waifs wandering the streets of Claremont.

In any case, there were two really unusual aspects to this issue. First, the money being discussed, $60,000 per year, does not exist. No one knows how much revenue Casa 425 might generate. It could be $60,000, or it could be half that. There is no data on the hotel to be able to predict the city's revenue stream from the hotel.

The other, larger problem is the fact that the city has allocated this money without having a program identified for it. It's just money in search of a problem, which is not the most efficient or wise way for a city to spend.

Rather than having groups propose programs and give a proposed budget for those programs, the city is saying, "We have $60,000 a year. Any takers?" Cities usually take the proposals first, then allocate the money after approving the programs. Here, Mayor Yao has done it backwards.

In the discussion on the issue, Councilmembers Taylor, Linda Elderkin, and Corey Calaycay all expressed concern about setting a precedent with this way of doing business. But in the end, only Calaycay voted against the funding mechanism.

Mayor Yao says he got the idea from a League of California Cities conference he attended recently. However, Mayor Yao did not know if the cities that had done this sort of earmarking of tax revenue had already identified specific programs beforehand or not.

Mayor Yao, and the other councilmembers, were apparently under pressure from Sue Likens and the local Interfaith Coalition to get that money set aside. In a lot of ways, Yao's and the council's reaction to that pressure is a lot like their initial reaction to Paystubgate - act without thinking.

Will the money be well-spent? Well, Mayor Yao himself mentioned that the money was needed because of the state's cutback on funding for Tri-City Mental Health, the joint agency run by Claremont, La Verne, and Pomona.

How well run was Tri-City? It filed for bankruptcy in 2004. The state's reasoning for eliminating its funding for Tri-City was that there are state-funded Los Angeles County programs that do the same thing, so why have redundant agencies?

As several of the councilmembers indicated, this method of funding is bad precedent, and nothing good will come of it, no matter how well-intended the actions were.

Crime Watch

The Daily Bulletin reports that an Ontario man was arrested over the weekend on charges of making criminal threats at Scripps College last week.

The suspect, Roderick Crawford, was arrested by Claremont police and is accused of making three threatening phone calls to Scripps last week. The first two calls were bomb threats. Searchers found no bombs after either of the first two calls.

The third time, on Friday, October 12th, the caller demanded money and said he would shoot people if he was not paid.

The article gave no reason for the calls. Crawford is due to be arraigned in Pomona on Thursday.

Six Degrees of Separation: Claremont, CMC, Kerri Dunn, Gary Lincenberg, Khristine Eroshevich, Anna Nicole

Claremont is home to Claremont McKenna College.




In March 2004, somebody vandalized Kerri Dunn's car in a parking lot at Claremont McKenna College with racial epithets.






In August 2004, CMC visiting professor Kerri Dunn was convicted on eyewitness testimony of vandalizing her own car.






Gary Lincenberg, of Bird, Marella, etc., etc., etc., & Lincenberg, was Dunn's attorney during her trial in Pomona Superior Court.



Dr. Khristine Elaine Eroshevich, who is under investigation by the California Medical Board is represented by Gary Lincenberg.




Anna Nicole, supermodel, died in February, and drugs were implicated. Dr. Khristine Eroshevich was her shrink and prescribed for her more than 1,800 pills, including the chloral hydrate implicated by the medical examiner.


Remember, the Insider connects the dots for you.

(Dr. Eroshevich should hope Lincenberg does a better job for her than he did for Dunn; Dunn was sentenced to one year in Stony Lonesome.)

Goings On

HEALTH FAIR

The City of Claremont will be hosting its Annual Flu Shot and Information Fair Friday, November 9th from 9am to 1pm.

The fair will be held at Taylor Hall at 1775 N. Indian Hill Blvd. just north of Claremont High School and next to Cahuilla Park.

Flu shots are free for people over 50, and there will be free health screenings and exhibitors distributing health information.

Call (909) 399-5488 for more information.


BLOCK PARTY

The city is also hosting a block party tonight from 5pm to 7pm at the corner of College Ave. and San Jose Ave. near Claremont Place. Light desserts will be served, and the city is inviting all Claremont residents.


FREE MULCH

The city is offering free mulch this Saturday, October 20th. You'll have to bring your own equipment to load and carry off the mulch, which will be available at the Alexander Hughes Community Center from 6am Saturday to 6am next Monday.

The Hughes Center is located at 1700 Danbury Rd. just south of Scripps and between Towne Ave. and Mountain Ave.

Hilary, Your Class is Showing

Saturday's Claremont Courier carried a peculiar ad by Claremont school board candidate Hilary LaConte.

The ad mentioned LaConte's gratefulness for public forums. However, it did not really explain much, other than to make a vague reference to inter-district transfers (students who live outside the Claremont Unified School District but who go to Claremont schools).

The ad left us scratching our heads until a reader sent us links to two letters in the Daily Bulletin. The first letter ran on October 11th and was from one of LaConte's opponents, Barbara Miller.

Miller's letter stated that at the October 2nd League of Women Voters candidate forum, after Miller gave a response describing the criteria CUSD uses for inter-district transfers, LaConte claimed that Miller was wrong and that LaConte "went on to compliment the audience for being nice enough to clap even when answers were wrong."

Translation: LaConte - "It's nice of the audience to clap even when my opponent is being stupid."

The problem is that it turned out, as Miller's letter details, LaConte was the one who was wrong. Miller's letter to the Bulletin detailed CUSD's policy and cited the applicable section of the state of California Education Code, as well as the Los Angeles County rule.

But in Claremont, it's not enough to be right. In fact, it doesn't matter at all.

As is typical of the Claremont 400, LaConte tried to intimidate and bully at the League forum, but got caught in the wrong. Now she feels compelled to eat crow. The Bulletin ran a response letter from LaConte on October 14th, and LaConte's ad ran in the Courier the same day.

Of course, LaConte's ad doesn't put the matter in context, nor does it apologize to Miller the way LaConte's letter to the Bulletin on October 14th did.

Why? Because LaConte knows that the majority of her voters read the Courier, not the Bulletin, so she included as little context and as much obfuscation as possible in the ad. Talk about mealy-mouthed!

Which just illustrates several points. First, those who defend LaConte as a nice person are simply wrong. Nice people do not make the catty sort of remarks that LaConte did at the League forum. Especially when they're wrong!

Second, nice people hold themselves accountable and apologize when they are wrong. LaConte made a minimal apology where she thought few of her supporters would see it, and then ran an ad in the wider venue (for this election) in which she said very little of substance and offered no context, no accountability, and no apology.

Third, LaConte did not do her homework, at least on the inter-district transfer issue. Then, she compounded matters by attacking the person who was more knowledgeable - Miller. Ignorance, arrogance, cattiness - all the Claremont 400 attributes rolled into one.

Not that it matters. As we've pointed out in the past, with this election and with others, being right has no bearing on the outcome. It's just a matter of being picked by the right people and getting the machine behind you.

But, that is also why Claremont and the Claremont 400, and such associated community groups as the League of Women Voters have lost so much of their credibility and are not deserving of our trust.

UPDATE: CHS Baseball

CHS baseball team parents felt comfortable backing head coach Mike Lee last week after meeting with Coach Lee and Claremont Unified School District (CUSD) representatives.

The story, though, hasn't completely faded away. Will Bigham has an article the Daily Bulletin that says that not only did Coach Lee resign his prior job at Westlake High School after complaints from parents over text messages he sent to his players, but he was also dismissed from the job he had before Westlake:

Lee worked from 2001 to 2003 as head coach at Newbury Park High School, and was fired after several parents complained about what they considered aggressive and inappropriate behavior by Lee toward players.

Lee responded to the firing by filing a defamation lawsuit against seven parents in 2004.

According to Bigham's article:

[Lee] tried unsuccessfully to find a coaching job for the 2004 season, and in court documents blamed his inability to find work on parents' "systematic campaign of publishing defamatory, slanderous and libelous comments" about him.

Two of the plaintiffs settled with Lee, the action against [parent Scott] Carpenter was dismissed, and Charles and Kathleen Fick successfully had the suit thrown out, said Paul Smigliani, their attorney in the case.

The article goes on to say that "the overwhelming majority of [Claremont team] parents left satisfied with Lee's answers, according to several parents who attended the meeting."

The matter was also a subject of a letter to the Claremont Courier by Marguerite Raybould, who didn't seem so much upset with Coach Lee as with Claremont Unified School District officials.

Wilderness Park Closure Abuse of Process

The notice above appeared on the City website Friday--no explanation--and we got to wondering: why is the Wilderness Park to be closed to the public on Sunday?

It turns out that the reason for this is that Supervisor Michael Antonovich is sponsoring a "Trail Ride" of some 140 horses that will be in the Wilderness Park sometime during the day on Sunday, October 14. For anyone who has been hiking in the Wilderness Park, it is easy to imagine that the mix of 140 horses and lots and lots of speeding mountain bikes is potentially a dangerous one.

The process, if you want to call it that, of how this came about is interesting.

Apparently the LA County Department of Parks and Recreation, which is arranging things, called the City on or about September 20 for the October 14 event. City staff told them that they would need a permit for this large a group to use the park...this rule is in the management guidelines for the park. And, staff further told them that it would take several months to issue the permit since it would have to go through a commission hearing.

Well, the LA County people said the magical incantation: "Supervisor.... Michael.... D.... Antonovich.... $500,000..... for..... Johnson's..... Pasture" and voila!--

The next day there was an agenda item for the September 25 city council meeting to exempt this event from the Wilderness Park permit rules. Even better, it was on the consent agenda--a non-controversial item; let's avoid discussion.

(Someday, just for fun, go down to City Hall and see how much luck you have getting an item agendized for a council meeting five days away.)

Fortunately Councilmember Calaycay pulled this item for separate discussion--after a member of the public raised a bunch of questions about it. Here it came out there our high-priced city staff simply wanted to exempt the Trail Ride from the permit, and hadn't looked into public safety, policy, or insurance issues involved. The only affirmative reason staff could give for granting the exemption was that there wasn't time to go through the process. The fact that it was the Supervisor's event was not included in the staff report, but did come out in the discussion.

The best moment came when Mayor Yao asked staff if at least they were going to close the park to separate the usual mountain bike sorties from the horses. "We hadn't planned to," was the City Manager's reply.

So it came to pass that all city council members agreed to close the park for the Supervisor, who wants to show Johnson's Pasture to his riders.

We wonder what happened to the process? Where was Defender of the Process Linda Elderkin? Or is this just another example of Claremont English?-- those words in the Management Guidelines may appear to mean something when you or I read them, but they actually mean something very different when used by City Staff and City Council.

The FC Blog already picked up on the Antonovich trail ride.

(We'd like to link to minutes of this discussion, but that is not possible right now. You can run down to city hall and get a tape of the council meeting (September 25, 2007) for a small fee. Also, there was a biting letter on this subject on page 17 of the Saturday, October 5 issue of the Claremont Courier. Unfortunately, the Courier did not put this letter online.)

(BTW, we noticed the typo in the City "Top Stories" release above, but we make too many bonehead errors to have the bad taste to point it out.)

CUSD Mail

As you might guess, not all our mail contains glowing reviews. We took some criticism over our post about machine politics and the Claremont 400's machine backing Claremont Unified School District Board of Education candidate Hilary LaConte.

Well, a reader we respect sent in a comment about the post and questioned our reasoning:

Hi Buzz -

When you say that someone like Hilary LaConte is "underqualified," do you mean underqualified for the school board, or underqualified compared to the other two candidates? Or, I suppose, both?

If you mean the former, you can complain all you want -- but she has chosen to run for the position. You have qualifications. Did you file your papers?

The only fair argument is the latter one: she must be considered only in the context of her qualifications compared to the other two. What are the qualifications of all three candidates who have thrown their hats in? How do they compare?

You could lament the fact that someone else with better qualifications hasn't chosen to run. That would also be fair. One could take the argument that more often than not in elections (local,state, national), those with the best credentials for the job do not have the personality, interest, or drive to run for office. Said differently,those who enter into politics and run for office are often, as a group, rather underqualified.

They are, however, the ones on the ballot, and we should vote for the one we think will do the best job.

Really, the point of our post was that in our view this Claremont 400 machine and the way in which they chose candidates diminishes the end result. Because they are able to control a large pool of votes (mostly in the Claremont Village), they are able to simply name a candidate - no matter the qualifications - and get that person elected.

It's not a matter of the person deciding to run so much as it a matter of candidates paying their dues within the machine to earn the right to get picked to run for an office or get named to a commission.

Hilary LaConte could never have run on her own. She had to have the backing of the machine. The Claremont 400 discourages more qualified candidates because someone with their own way of thinking would be too independent for the 400 to back. And without that backing, the likelihood of winning has traditionally been nil, especially in school board races where turnout is minuscule.

Our point was that the 400 could just choose to run a monkey (or Xavier Alvarez for that matter) for school board and have that unqualified candidate win.

LaConte is probably a perfectly nice person, but that doesn't mean she's the best person available or even the best person running. But she will probably get the most votes because of her backing - the same type of backing, by the way, that was resulted in the questionable goings on in City Hall these days.

Besides, by all accounts, the other two CUSD board candidates, Elizabeth Bingham and Barbara Miller are equally nice people, and all three seem pretty closely in agreement on the issues. That leaves us with only their qualifications separating them.

To that end, we'll try do a comparison of those qualifications in the near future - without commentary - and post those. We plan on using each candidate's own campaign material so that you have their own words, not our interpretation, and we leave the evaluation up to you.

* * *

Getting back to the niceness issue, another reader wrote in to say:

I like your work quite a bit but will say without reservation that you are wrong when you opine that Hilary LaConte has a" lack of competence". Hilary came up through CUSD schools to teach at her alma mater, Vista del Valle, not by any measure a hothouse for the mythical 400. She is not only competent but also dillgent and passionate, as much a student of CUSD, its strengths and its weaknesses, as anyone. She is in fact an ideal candidate, and like any will have to endure a steep learning curve in this thankless job, but as past is prologue, she'll come through swimmingly.

BTW: I have been trying to figure who the 400 are and, as best I can calculate, a more useful figure that better approximates our political complexity and voting reality would be to add a decimal place. The 400 is perhaps flattering to those who deem themselves among the elect, but to my lights when you count up who counts, its closer to 4000 tightly networked and generally good people.

Keep up the brilliant work; I find myself reading your blog more than the LA times!

Thanks for the kind words, dear reader, but we respectfully disagree on several points. First, the fact that LaConte is a product of Claremont schools is not necessarily a recommendation in and of itself. Our contention has been that the governing bodies in town have suffered too much ideological inbreeding. The echo chamber effect is in full force, and that is not a good thing, as anyone at the CGU's Drucker School of Management could tell us. If anything, LaConte is all too susceptible to the groupthink mentality.

Second, we really doubt there are 4,000 tightly networked people deciding these things. There's probably 50-75 people who are the ideological gatekeepers, and they simply tell the Village residents and the retirees at Pilgrim Place and the Claremont Manor how to vote. That's what turns the elections, especially one in which there's a 25-percent or worse turnout.

As for LaConte, the fact that she was a co-chair of Councilmember Linda Elderkin's March, 2007, campaign speaks for itself. She would not have been given that position if she hadn't been well-ensconced as a 400 member, and if she weren't positioning herself to run for CUSD board.

Lastly, we don't doubt that LaConte or any of the other 400 members are good people individually. But we also believe that collectively their actions are less than good, that the aggregate is is far less than sum of the individual components.

This is why all of the disasters we have enumerated before have happened. The collective believes so completely in its infallibility that it cannot conceive of being wrong. No good can come of this kind of exclusive thinking.

And no good will come of it in the future.

Ready, Fire, Aim: Transcript of Claremont City Attorney Remarks

We notice that the article in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin originally reporting the Claremont City Attorney's "my bad" now contains a transcript of her remarks. We urge you to follow this link to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin site and read them there in full, in context, and standing alone.

The transcript of her statement follows, with our inevitable comments in red:

I would like to add a few comments of my own, and respond to the editorial that appeared in the Daily Bulletin today.

I know it has been alleged that I used my position as city attorney to exercise prior restraint against the Claremont [Insider] blog and those that host it, administer it, and use it to express their point of view.

I want you to know, mayor and City Council members, as my employer and as the person you hold and trust to advise you on legal issues, it was never my intent to pursue legal action to permanently take the blog and its content entirely off-line.

My intent was to make sure that the city carried out its duty to its employees to protect their privacy information. The letter I sent to Google was a very quick reaction to a very serious problem that I was informed of at about noon or 12:30 that Friday [September 7, 2006].

I responded with the information I had at hand that day. I was hundreds of miles away from City Hall and from my office [in Sacramento, at a League of Cities conference attended also by most of the city council], and the information I had at that time was that there was a serious and extensive breach of employee privacy, and as posted on the blog itself, all other sorts of official city business [All sorts of official city business? We could only hope...]. The post suggested that further information would be posted upon request of people who were reading the blog.

At that time I had absolutely no idea what might appear next on the blog. I knew, based on reading that blog, [Oh, so she read it. She knew there was nothing private posted, nor social security numbers, nor anything else from her little shop of private horrors.] that perhaps the information had been placed in a trash can outside of City Hall. I didn't know the extent as to how that information got there. But I had to react and protect the city's interest in terms of protecting the employee privacy issues immediately, without the benefit of an extra few days.

Seriously, I did not know whether social security numbers, direct bank deposit account information, home addresses and phone numbers, were also out - were placed in those trash cans or were somehow available through our portal on the Web site [So, to cut to the chase, she was demanding prior restraint with respect to other pieces of information that had not been posted, that she imagined might be in our hands, but that she had no rational basis for believing anyone even had.] And therefore, I sent the letter demanding that Google honor its own privacy policies, which state that Google reserves the right to remove a post or the entire blog.

It was sort of in the spirit of Google's own privacy policies that I parroted their information. [Yeah, City Attorneys do a lot of parroting, usually in incomprehensible legalese, usually to intimidate.] And you know what, I have to tell you in hindsight I can see how the structure of the letter, the raised statement in the letter, and the demand itself might appear offensive to those who abhor the idea of prior restraint.

I can see how the very thought of using government resources to silent those who wish to comment on their government absolutely would not be tolerated in this community, the city of Claremont, that I've worked with and worked for for over 15 years now. [...so we here at BBK are going to write off this month's bill to the City.]

I want you to be assured that it was not my intent to interfere with the First Amendment rights of the bloggers. It was my intent to see whether Google would honor its privacy policies in the event that further breaches of employee privacy occurred. Google acted in accord with its blog-hosting policies, and I'm confident that they'll do that again, and that's the reason I've not taken any further action.

I've given a lot of thought on a personal and professional level as to whether you respond to information that's placed on the blog, or how do you respond to a newspaper like the Daily Bulletin when they accuse you of doing something improper, and accuse your client of doing something like violating the Brown Act.

You know, I have to tell you that I have a very deep respect for the First Amendment, and I wasn't going to say this tonight, but I think in the spirit of Corey, council member Calaycay, I'm going to say this. Like all of you, I've taken an oath to uphold the United States and California constitutions. As a member of the state bar I take that oath very seriously.

And you know what, I've been personally attacked by the blogs, and I have to admit to you it doesn't feel good. And if the aim of those bloggers were to make me suffer personal pain, then they've succeeded [Not our intent. Ms Carvalho, as City Attorney, not as a private person, has a tremendous amount of power, power that she chooses when and how to wield.]. But what they won't succeed at doing is making me give you, the city of Claremont, any less effort in being your city attorney and serving the interests of the city of Claremont.

Kudos to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and to reporter Will Bigham for their detailed and comprehensive work on this story. It was reporter Bigham who got the copies of Carvalho's letter to Google, and who, we presume, caused the transcript quoted above to be made.

Foothill Cities Commentary

The FC Blog is up this morning with some commentary on Paystubgate. (Click on "Den of Falsehood" under the image on Foothill Cities for the text. Their writer Centinel takes some jabs at Claremont's City Attorney and City Hall in general.

City IT Security Report Forthcoming?

Paystubgate continues to generate comments from our readers. The coda may not be come until the release of the investigation report by the outside IT consultants hired by the city of Claremont.

Will Bigham's Daily Bulletin article yesterday mentioned the fact that Claremont City Manager Jeff Parker received the report Monday. No word on whether or not it's been released or if it's been sealed into the 2032 time capsule in City Hall, which may be what one esteemed reader is thinking:

It seems to me, reading Ms. Carvalho’s “emotional” statement as printed in the Daily Bulletin, that she says she didn’t have all the facts, she didn’t bother to get them, she was in a hurry, she was miles away (I presume she means geographically), she was freaked out by the thought that someone (everyone) would know what city employees make, she was only interested in protecting Claremont, and she didn’t mean it anyway. Remember Emily Litella from SNL—“never mind”. She does not bother to explain how she knew about the information being out there and who asked her to write to Google on behalf of the city and its employees.

What is the fine city of Claremont paying this unprepared attorney who cannot admit she made a big mistake (on behalf of the city and its employees)?

Keep the heat on. I can’t wait for the security consultant’s report to be made public sometime next year after much kicking, screaming, whining, protesting, and efforts to seal it away.

Mailbag

Well, we had wanted to put up a couple notes we got in on the local school board election, but we're going to have to hold off on those for a day or two until we get some of these other emails up.

Dean McHenry wrote us to correct the false impression our post from yesterday may have created that McHenry was speaking as a representative of Active Claremont in front of the city council last Tuesday and in a recent letter to the Daily Bulletin.

The email mentions the Bulletin's article decribing McHenry as president of AC, but we also gave him that attribution, so we're assuming the note was meant for us as well:

Dear Editor,

In Will Bigham’s informative article “City Attorney Clarifies Letter’s Intent” (Daily Bulletin, October 11, 2007) I am identified correctly as the President of Active Claremont. But, lest readers think that attribution means I was speaking for the organization, let me state that is not the case. I was speaking solely as a private citizen. Active Claremont encourages citizen involvement in local government and the expression of a wide range of views. Indeed, we take pride in providing a forum for discussions emanating from various points of view. None of us speaks for the organization on such contentious issues. We appreciate the Daily Bulletin’s continuing efforts to provide us with important news about Claremont for it facilitates one of our organization’s goals: citizen involvement in our governance.

Dean E. McHenry, Jr.

Claremont English (or The Ol' Misdirection)

The Daily Bulletin reports today that at Tuesday night's Claremont City Council meeting Claremont City Attorney Sonia Carvalho clarified the intent of her September 7th letter to Google in which she insisted that Google "...terminate the hosting service for this blog [The Claremont Insider]..."

In her letter, Carvalho went on to demand:

If the blog is not taken off line by 5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time today [September 7, 2007] we will seek an injunction in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Monday, September 10, 2007 to compel the removal of the confidential personnel information from the blog and any other website hosted or controlled by Google.

Seems pretty clear, no? Terminate, take off line, doesn't that sound like Carvalho ordering Google to kill the Insider?

Here's the letter itself for you to see:

Click on Image to Enlarge

Apparently, though, you and we were wrong about what we read. Claremont English turns out to be a different language from standard American English. The two sound similar, but have entirely different meanings, with the primary difference being that Claremont English means whatever the speaker wants it to mean (up is down, left is right, white is black).

In American English, saying something that is not true is called lying. In Claremont English, it is called "clarification."

Today's Bulletin article by Will Bigham reports that at Tuesday's City Council meeting Carvalho "delivered an emotional statement":

"I have to tell you in hindsight I can see how the structure of the letter, the raised statement in the letter, and the demand itself might appear offensive to those who abhor the idea of prior restraint," Carvalho said.

The intent of the letter was not to demand that the blog be shut down completely, Carvalho said, but that Google "honor its privacy policies in the event that further breaches of employee privacy occurred."

According to the article, Carvalho now says that at the time she wrote the letter, she had "incomplete information on what the blog possessed."

Oh.

Then shouldn't the first act of a responsible, competent attorney be to gather as many facts as possible before placing false accusations and false claims in a letter? How hard is it to send an email to the Insider's email address asking for the source of the information? To date, no one from the city, including Carvalho, has contacted us.

Carvalho's actions betray a trait all too common among Claremont's representatives: a troubling tendency to stand up a city meetings and deliver incomplete, incorrect, or even false information with the voice of authority. Because these confident, smiling figures (Sonia Carvalho, City Manager Jeff Parker, City Human Services Director Jeff Porter, other senior staff, as well as our esteemed Councilmembers) deliver these dubious statements with such certitude, they are accepted as fact.

This happens at every City Council meeting on virtually any topic. To prove our point, we will review Tuesday's meeting after it is broadcast on cable TV next Monday and will provide some clips to back up our claims.

The Insider hereby proposes a $100 fine for every fib a councilmember or a city staffer tells at a public meeting. The money can be put back into the city's General Fund. We just might have found a way to pay for that $12 million Padua Park!

Stay tuned.

* * *

Will Bigham's article also noted that Citizen Michael Keenan got up at public comment and used his four minutes to read employee names and salaries into the record. You go, Michael!

According to Bigham, Active Claremont president Dean McHenry also got up and said, "I think that's the first time since this city was founded 100 years ago that you've gone to the extent of demanding the shutdown of a news source."

* * *

We'll be back tomorrow with a trip to the mailbag. A couple readers have chimed in with thoughts about the Claremont school board race.

Real letters! Real English!

Claremont to Kids: "Breathe This!"

Affordable Housing EIR

The Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham has a story about Claremont's affordable housing project at Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave. on the north side of the 210 Freeway.

The FC Blog also offered up some commentary on the project.

The project has been pushed (shoved) along by such Claremont dilettantes as former Police Commission Chair Helaine Goldwater and her friend Mayor Pro Tem Ellen Taylor, who seem to be saying, "Put it anywhere but in the Village, at any cost."

The costs are now becoming clear. The environmental impact report (EIR) for the project is now in. You can see it here on the city's website (see how easy that is?).


Sensitive Receptors

The most interesting section of the EIR is AIR QUALITY (Section 3.2). It turns out that for so-called "sensitive receptors" - consultant-speak for structures that house people who are especially sensitive to air pollution, mainly kids and the elderly - living continuously next to a freeway is a bad thing.

The EIR mentions the results of a ten-year study by USC School of Medicine that found that living within 500 meters of a freeway can significantly impair the development of children's lungs.

The report also cites a California Air Quality Board land-use handbook that says states that officials should "Avoid siting new sensitive land uses [like affordable housing projects] within 500 feet of a freeway." The project EIR also notes that the entire Base Line Rd. project falls within 500 feet of the 210 Freeway.

Page 3.2-20 of the EIR's Air Quality section tells us:

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that living or going to school near roadways with heavy traffic volumes is associated with a number adverse effects. These include increased respiratory symptoms, increased risk of heart and lung disease, and elevated mortality rates.

Okay, kids, you're going to have to take one for the Claremont 400. At least we're teaching self-sacrifice and team play.

The EIR goes on to list three possible mitigations that would allow the city to go forward with the project:

1. Requiring HVAC units with special filters.
   Question: What happens when the developer stops maintaining the filters?
   


2. Requiring dense plantings along the south-side of the project bordering the freeway.
   Question: How do the plantings stop air flowing over, around, and between the plants?
   


3. Requiring tenants to be given a legal notice informing them of the risks associated with the project.
   Observation: This seems to say, "Affordable housing folks, your kids get what they deserve, don't blame us."
   
   
   

The Claremont Solution

Pictured above:
Proposed city of Claremont mitigation absolving it of any legal or moral responsibility for lung damage to children living the the city's new affordable housing project. No word on whether or not the city has contracted with the legal department at tobacco company R. J. Reynolds for legal defense services.

* * *

As you might be thinking, there's really not much the city can do to seriously mitigate the problems they have with the site. And, as you might also be thinking, Claremont and the Claremont 400, remain as inflexible and uncreative their problem-solving as ever. You would be right on both counts.

Will Bigham's article reported:

Supporters of the project appeared poised to move forward despite the health concerns, citing several other residential projects adjacent to the freeway that have been recently approved by the City Council.

"We have a number of housing projects along the freeway, and this is not going to be any better or worse than any of the other housing developments," Mayor Peter Yao said.

"The EIR is to make us understand what areas where we can mitigate the negative impacts, but from my perspective it's not going to kill the project."

Mayor Yao seems to be saying the purpose of the EIR is not to identify significant impacts of the project but to find ways of getting around those impacts.

Fair enough. Only, let's not hear any more about what a kid-friendly town Claremont is. When Claremonters Against Strip Mining (CASM) and city staff were fighting Vulcan Materials' proposed gravel mining project in Northeast Claremont one of the things they claimed was that pollution would be damaging to kids' lungs.

And now it's okay or at least can be mitigated by decree. So goes the absurdist logic of Claremont.

* * *

The Base Line Rd. project EIR identifies a couple alternative sites in other parts of town that would not have the problems this site has, but the 400 refuses to budge, even in the face of their own EIR.

This is precisely why the EIR process, as utilized by the city of Claremont, is defunct. It's not about building the best project or identifying all the possible alternatives. It's about finding the legal loopholes through which to jam faulty projects pushed by a Claremont 400 incapable of a course correction (stay the course, stay the course).

It is no different for this project than it is for any other project in town. The 400 decides what it wants, usually before all the available information is at hand, then staff is charged with pushing that project through. And staff, including the city attorney, can be counted on to manipulate, twist, and ignore facts to get whatever result they want.

Pictured at right:
Mitigation proposed by Claremont city staff and Mayor Yao: Personal kiddie "Mr. Air" units. Very low-income kids to share units, hold breaths until their turn comes up.

Free Speech Update

The Daily Bulletin carried a letter from Dean McHenry today criticizing the city for it response to Paystubgate.

McHenry defended the Insider from the city's attempt at prior restraint:

Rather than apologizing to the citizens of Claremont for its violation of their right to know, the city decided to attack the messenger over the form in which the information was provided. The city did not simply ask that the blurry, scanned copy of two pay slips be removed from the blog, it demanded the complete removal of the whole Web site. That is equivalent to a demand that the Daily Bulletin be shut down because someone did not like the way information was being presented.

McHenry's letter ends by pointing out the irony that Claremont is celebrating it's centennial (second one in the past 20 years) by quashing free speech.

Coach Lee Update

Will Bigham reports on the Daily Bulletin's website that after meeting with Claremont High School baseball team parents in a private meeting yesterday, parents and school administrators remain supportive of baseball coach Mike Lee and want him to stay on at CHS.

City Says, "Death to the Insider!"

Death Penalty

We've been working on a post trying to tie some of the events of the past month together, in particular the attempt by the city of Claremont to shut down our blog, as well some of the other acts of official secrecy that really seem to fly in the face of the openness Claremont officials give occasional lip service to.

Well, the Daily Bulletin editorial board beat us to the punch. They have an editorial in today's Bulletin that neatly ties a lot of these observations together in a far more clear and concise way than we ever could.

The Bulletin picked up on one particularly disturbing comment a city official made last week:

Mayor Peter Yao said the demand to remove the offending posts and the demand to terminate the blog were "one and the same," but that's not the case at all.

Mayor Yao seems to have absolutely no understanding of the concept of prior restraint. It's one thing to ask Google to remove a post the city finds objectionable - even that is a questionable action - but it's quite another to try to bar all future publication by arguing that the alleged offender (the Insider) might do some other as-yet unknown, objectionable thing in the unspecified future.

The thing has to be published first, then objected to. Claremont, Mayor Yao, and City Attorney Sonia Carvalho have no power to prevent publication beforehand, which is what the city was trying to do. It amounts to a banana republic shutting down the printing presses.

Further, as we've argued, and as the Bulletin points out, the city's claim that the pay stubs we published contained confidential information is very doubtful:

Besides, it's not at all clear that the offending posts were illegal, or obtained illegally, or even consisted of privileged information. The California Supreme Court ruled in August that pay records for public employees are a matter of public record.

The pay stubs that were posted itemized dollar amounts for earnings, benefits, leave earnings and deductions. It did not reveal private information such as Social Security number, date of birth, home address or bank account numbers. The post did include information about types of medical deductions that we would not reveal; Carvalho says that information is privileged, some open-governments say it's not, some are unsure.

This all points up the greater need for original source documents. The city would rather provide lists of names and salary numbers instead of the actual pay stubs. But the city clearly cannot be trusted to just give out sanitized spreadsheets. If confidential information is on the pay stubs as they claim, that can be redacted, but the public should be able to see the type of information being withheld.

Clearly, Claremont has sought to hide the amounts of money it pays to its employees and to conceal certain things like performance bonuses. Why? Because that information might reveal that public employees are much more highly compensated than the majority of workers in the private sector. And that would raise the question of whether or not the public is really getting its money's worth for some of these positions.

They're just mad at themselves for posting the material on their on-line document archive where we, and anybody else interested, could easily read and download the pay stubs.


Secrecy

Another thing that this sad episode reminds us of is Claremont's history of conducting its official business in secret. Claremont, after all, was awarded a Black Hole Award in 2000 by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), and the city seems to have learned nothing in the intervening years.

Today's Bulletin editorial states:

The cases are stronger, in our opinion, that Claremont's council violated the Brown Act:

In June, went it met in closed session to discuss negotiations between two private parties concerning the city's DoubleTree Hotel.

In January 2005, when it met in closed session to discuss a councilwoman's actions and how to respond to them.

Twice in early 2003, when a councilwoman participated in a committee meeting of a council subcommittee consisting of two councilmen, turning it into an unagendized council meeting; and when a councilman contacted his colleagues one by one to ask for another term as mayor, constituting an unlawful serial council meeting.

The hypocrisy of it all is that some of the our current councilmembers - Ellen Taylor, Linda Elderkin, and Sam Pedroza - and the organizations that back these people (the Claremont Area League of Women Voters, the local Democratic Club, and others) would surely argue against governmental secrecy on the national level but tolerate, support, and encourage it on the local level.

Sadder still is to watch these groups abandon all they claim to stand for, time and again, merely for the sake of keeping control of the city.

It's easy to speak out against something 3,000 miles away, something you have little chance of influencing. The real test is when it's in your own backyard. Will you stand up, even if it means criticizing your friends and neighbors, or will you deny all those things you thought you believed in: free speech, open government, rule of law, fundamental fairness?

In Claremont, we know the answer: Res ipsa loquitur.

CHS Coach Update

Will Bigham has an update regarding Claremont High School baseball coach Mike Lee posted on the Daily Bulletin website.

Lee, who resigned as the Westlake High School baseball coach earlier this year for personal health reasons or because he did not comply with an agreement to not text-message his players (depending on who you talk to), will be meeting at the home of CHS parent Charles Kessler tonight, along with other CHS coaches and CUSD officials.

The meeting with Coach Lee is open only to parents of CHS baseball team members. Parents will be allowed to submit anonymous questions to Coach Lee.

Free Speech News

Ed Padgett, who is a pressman for the Los Angeles Times, has a blog called the LA Pressmen's 20 Year Club. He picked up on the story of Claremont City Attorney Sonia Carvalho trying to have our blog shut down for publishing images of Claremont employee pay stubs - see Padgett's post "Censorship in Claremont."

Padgett pointed out something we'd been wondering about. For all the teeth-gnashing that's gone on over this issue, why has Carvalho or the city of Claremont never contacted us directly if they have a problem with something we've posted?

* * *

The Foothill Cities Blog also had a lively discussion on the same topic.

And, in a similar vein, the FC Blog also picked up on an LA Daily News story about City of Los Angeles Dept. of Water & Power worker salaries.

Centinel at the FC Blog thought that Sonia Carvalho should sue the Daily News. Centinel quoted Daily News editor Ron Kaye on the DWP article:

If you read only one story today, I hope it will be this one. The DWP’s bloated salaries, poor management and soaring rates are the most glaring example of what’s wrong with Los Angeles city government. We think this is so important we’ve put up the salaries of all 8,500 employees at dailynews.com. See how your pay compares with theirs.–Ron Kaye, editor

* * *

Opening up the mailbag, we also had a smattering of supportive mail:

This is the best story since FLAG GATE. I had not heard of this site until last week when my wife found it. Keep it going.

And this:

Dear Mr Buzz,

Until now, I thought that the contretemps between the Insider and the City was little more than a matter of petty bureaucrats behaving in silly ways when they don’t get their way. These latest developments, however, are a couple of orders of magnitude beyond that.

I’m sure you’ve heard from others with similar offers, but I hope you’ll add the names of me and my wife to the list of those who will happily contribute to a fund to protect the Insider from being shut down and you and its staff from malicious legal action.

And this:

Pretty sure this..."Carvalho's letter also states that the information in the blog post 'was obtained in an illegal manner that appears to have involved trespass theft.'"...is defamatory, and I would loooooove to see you sue them. Love it, love it, love it, love it.

In any event, keep on keeping on. You're doing great work.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

Karl Benjamin in the NYT

#9 (1966) Karl Benjamin

Claremont artist Karl Benjamin would never be mistaken for a joiner. The self-taught Claremont artist has always gone his own way as is clear in New York Times reporter Jori Finkel's article in yesterday's NYT:

...Mr. Benjamin began painting in 1950 while working as a grade school teacher. His principal started it all by asking him to add 47 minutes a week of art instruction to the curriculum.

“I bought some crayons and paper,” he said. “And the kids drew trucks, trees, mountains. That was boring, so I said, No trucks, no trees. And they said, What should we do? I said the right thing, even though I didn’t have any background in art. I said, Be quiet and concentrate.”

That exercise — ultimately a lesson in “finding the right color to put down next to another” — is not far from Mr. Benjamin’s own sense of composition. As he likes to say, “Color is the subject matter of painting.”

When school let out, Mr. Benjamin began experimenting with oils at home, at first imitating artists like Miró. He also got to know the Los Angeles art scene of the 1950s.

The NYT online article also had a nice slideshow of some of Benjamin's work.

Benjamin, who was not part of the California School founded in part by Millard Sheets, developed his own style of painting using geometric shapes, flat brush strokes and often vibrant colors that was called Abstract Classicist or hard-edged painting.

Benjamin has since gone on to become one of the most world-renowned of all Claremont artists, mostly by following his own muse. Benjamin's always been concerned with politics, though is work is decidedly non-political. He's been pretty vocal in local politics as well.

During the aftermath of the Irvin Landrum shooting, for example, he was highly critical of the Claremont city government. As a result, city officials never really acknowledged Benjamin's status as an artist. A few years ago, the person in charge of art at city hall decided to not have a showing of Benjamin's paintings, almost certainly because of his support of candidates who might be considered opponents of the status quo in Claremont.

But that appears to have changed in the last couple years, beginning with a Chamber of Commerce showing of some of Benjamin's work, and the new Claremont Museum of Art's inaugural exhibition was a Benjamin retrospective. Not that it mattered. Benjamin's international reputation never needed Claremont's stamp of approval.

Dumb and Dumber: Rise of the Machines

The mess over at Three Valleys Municipal Water District over board member Xavier Alvarez's apparent false claims of winning a Medal of Honor has gotten wide play in the local blogosphere, at least on the FC Blog.

San Gabriel Valley Tribune writer Frank Giradot got into the act, filling readers in on the story behind the story. Alvarez's imaginative powers must not be too great. He seems to have pulled a lot of the material for his war stories from movies, or so Giradot's piece tells us. At least Alvarez seems to have been watching dramas and not movies like "Stripes" or "Private Benjamin." Though, if he had, he might make for a more sympathetic character, rather than simply pathetic.

All this Alvarez news has the Insider waxing philosophic. How exactly does such an obvious doofus like Alvarez replace a respected, knowledgeable incumbent like Luis Juarez as Pomona's District I representative on the Three Valleys board?

The vote, in November, 2006, was close - 50 votes out of 7,658 ballots cast. Yet, Alvarez emerged victorious. How? One reason, may be that he had some powerful supporters, such as Pomona mayor Norma Torres and some of her well-placed friends, telling people what a fine fellow Alvarez is.

That sort machine politics makes the quality of the candidates irrelevant, at least until some embarrassing, unpleasant truth comes out. The machine just tells people to vote a certain way, and they do.

The same sort of nonsense by the Claremont 400 has in the past resulted in a succession of sycophants and incompetent, petty tyrants on both the City Council and the local school board. Watch the ads and mailers coming out for the current Claremont Unified School District election, and you'll see the same people urging you to vote for this or that person because Judy Wright or Diann Ring or Helaine Goldwater or Ellen Taylor says this person is qualified. It's been thus in Claremont for a generation, and all signs point to more of the same in the future.

That's why, as we pointed out a couple days ago, an underqualified substitute elementary school teacher like Hilary LaConte, can be touted as an expert in anything. The only things LaConte has done to merit consideration are such good works as serving as Claremont Councilperson Linda Elderkin's campaign co-chair, along with Helaine Goldwater.

Of course, LaConte's lack of competence doesn't sink to the depths of an Xavier Alvarez (few do) but is she really deserving of the position she seeks? We think not. Yet, the machine grinds on, telling us you must vote for her. Her qualifications matter not a whit.

As a result, real issues, such as they may be in a upper middle-class community like as Claremont, never get an airing in the election process or during school board meetings. The level of debate, or non-debate, is dumbed ever downward.

Well, as they say, you gotta throw the hay low enough for the goats to eat.

CUSD Coach Issue

In other, non-censorship news, both the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Bulletin reported this week that Claremont High School baseball coach Mike Lee resigned from his last job in Ventura County as the result of allegedly inappropriate text messages he sent between himself and his players.

Lee denied any impropriety in the messages.

Lee, who last year coached baseball at Westlake High School and who taught at Newbury Park High in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, resigned the Westlake job last May. According to the two newspaper articles, Lee had told Claremont administrators he had resigned at Westlake due to personal health issues.

The Times article reported that Devon Freitas, assistant superintendent for human resources for Claremont Unified School District (CUSD), said that he had received "'glowing letters of recommendation' from [Westlake Principal Ron] Lipari and from former Newbury Park High Principal Max Beaman...."

But, the Times article also stated that Lipari said no one from CUSD ever contacted him during the time Lee was interviewing for a job here.

The Times report goes on to say that Lee's official reason for resigning the Westlake post was due to health reasons. However, the health issues seemed to be the result of complaints by parents over Lee's text-messaging some of his players.

The Times obtained copies of memos from the Conejo Valley Unified School District, and they showed:

Lipari's heavily redacted memo to Newbury Park Principal Athol Wong detailed meetings between Lee and Westlake administrators.

The first came on March 19 at Lee's request. Lee said a parent had told him to resign or he would go to the district and school authorities with e-mails and text messages to his son, the memo said.

Lee said he never inappropriately touched the player,Lipari's memo said. Lee explained to Passalacqua and another administrator that he had a "father-son relationship" with the player and acknowledged saying "Love You" in text messages, Lipari wrote.

Passalacqua reminded Lee that he had been told to stop text-messaging all players. Lee said he had stopped, except for one player. Lee said he "felt he did not do anything wrong and wanted to keep his job," the memo said.

Lee had reportedly sent another text message to one student after he had agreed to stop the messages, and the Times article quoted a memo regarding a March 20, 2007, meeting where:

"Mike said he realized the seriousness of his actions, and he admitted to defying our directive to not text-message or call individual players," Lipari wrote. "Since Mike admitted to defying our administrative directive, and due to the seriousness of the text messages, I agreed that it would be in everyone's best interest if he resigned."

The Bulletin article indicated that CUSD officials will meet next week to "discuss what future role Lee will have in the district" and that Lee had voluntarily agreed to not send text messages to students here.

More Centennial Celebrations

The Claremont (Second) Centennial continued this week. Will Bigham in the Daily Bulletin reported on the opening of the 1983 time capsule. The capsule was buried in front of city hall.

Bigham wrote that the capsule had deteriorated and some of the contents were damaged. A new capsule will be dedicated next Tuesday and will be put in a bench at city hall. The new capsule's dedication will be at 5pm at city hall.

_______________________

Bigham also noted on Monday that Claremont will be holding a centennial shindig at Cahuilla Park tonight from 6:00 to 9:00pm. All are welcome, and there'll be food, music and things to entertain the kids.

Cahuilla Park is located next to Claremont High School at the corner of Indian Hill Blvd. and Scripps Ave. Call (909) 399-5490 for information.