The Political Implications of Measure V Going Down

Earlier this week, I got a bunch of emails from people informing me that, two weeks after election day, the election office was almost done counting ballots and that the local media called Measure V a failure.  If the local media were journalists who really paid any attention to local politics, they would have known this fact after the second drop of ballots.  People who support limited government drop off their ballots on election day, because (shocker) they don't trust the way the local government runs our elections.  So, once Measure V was losing on Tuesday night, anyone who pays attention to politics would know that it was only going to get worse for Measure V as more and more ballots were counted and that the margin would only get wider.  That is exactly what happened.  Not only did the measure go down, but there will also be serious consequences for the County's mishandling of Measure V.

That said, Measure V brings up some broader local questions.  For instance, why do some many people not trust their local election office and bring ballots on election day and not mail them?  Seriously, three weeks to get election results is some third-world shit.  Lol.  Can we please just all go vote on election day like normal countries and get our election results that night like every other developed nation?   Damn.  The elementary school kids electing student council have more secure and efficient elections than their parents.  It is seriously embarrassing.

Also, there is also a huge underlying sentiment locally against government, period.  When it comes to government in California, there is no room for wimps.  California's overbearing government is legendary outside of California and is palpable to its residents.  So many of our friends have left for freer pastures like Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, South Carolina, and, yes, Florida.  I say jokingly to my friends that you are all wimps!  Instead of fighting these government assholes, you bailed and left us alone in the California wilderness with these morons!  In reality, however and truth be told, many of us want to leave California but just cannot do it.  Whether it be our children, our dearest of friends without whom we simply cannot live, or our hopes for our local community and our state, we just cannot pull the trigger and leave.  

Close your eyes and imagine 30 years ago your best friend looking you dead in the eyes and actually saying, "Dude. I am out. California sucks."  You would have smacked him upside his head.  There was no place cooler to live.  Period.  Full stop.  Everyone wanted to be here.  It is freaking gorgeous, and the weather!?  Please.  I grew up in Chicago, so on the weather angle alone, California is bomb.  Now, imagine at Thanksgiving dinner today your friend looks you in the eyes and says, "Dude. I am out. California sucks."  Instead of smacking him in the melon, you are likely gonna be a little jealous.  The dichotomy is crazy.  Between 2021 and 2022, more people left California than moved here.  That's insane.  How bad is it if people are leaving arguably the most favorable and beautiful geographic area on the entire planet?  Yep, it is that bad, but what does that have to do with Measure V, you ask?

There is a huge swath of our local population that believes that $367,000,000 a year is too much for ineffective local government, and it has to stop.  Seriously.  The County billed Measure V as $12 million magic bullet to prevent the tragedy of Paradise from ever happening in Nevada County.  I call bullshit.  How is that local homeless problem that you have not fixed yet which has been dragging on for 20 years and getting worse instead of better?  Can we please have normal elections like real democracies?  How is the meth problem in town that you apparently have no desire to fix?  My wife and I saw an epic tweaker at the gas station today in the Brunswick Basin.  Dude's upper body was all curled up has he shook and tweaked across the parking lot.  Way better tweaker than the guy that is always jumping between cars at the corner of Sutton and Brunswick.  How is the affordable housing problem?  Yet, we try to raise our children here, and we give the County $367,000,000 a year, and they don't fix shit?  How about the County and the state let us keep our tax money if you cannot fix anything?  Despite not fixing shit, the executives at the County will all be wealthy people when they retire.  Not comfortable or just able to make ends meet.  Wealthy.  Nobody should derive wealth off of the taxpayers.  It is frankly disgusting.  Our County's chief executive officer makes over $410,000 a year including salary and benefits.  How much do you make?  If you had as much "success" at your job, would you still have one?  

Until we start electing strong leaders who will get rid of these incompetent rubes, our friends will continue to abandon us.  Such is where we are.  We are here in this California because of our own choices.  We can make California great again, but we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result.  

On that note, all is not lost.  We live in a wonderful community that takes care of each other and loves each other.  If you ever need to be reminded of that, go to Hooper Stadium on Thanksgiving for Mike Bratton's Turkey Trot and feel the love.  Love that will bring tears to your eyes.  We have a wonderful community - a wonderful community that could do with a lot less ineffective government.

Fair Political Practices Commission Investigating Nevada County, Yes on V for Campaign Finance Violations

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."  In order to have such "consent of the governed" and as an American people, we demand fair and honest elections and campaigns, for true consent of the governed cannot be given if would-be politicians conduct their campaigns dishonestly and in violation of the laws established by the state legislature.  Always believing the best in people, we assume that our local officials are honest and play by the rules until proven otherwise.  The coordinated campaign by Nevada County and the proponents of Measure V clearly demonstrates the "otherwise."

While we have discussed the historical underpinnings of Nevada County's misuse of taxpayer dollars to send the electorate campaign mailers in support of Measure V here, it turns out that, indeed, the use of taxpayer dollars for campaign material is also illegal.  In fact, the Fair Political Practice Commission ("FPPC") is investigating both Nevada County and the political action committee supporting Measure V ("Yes on V") for violations of the California Fair Political Practices Act.

In short and in violation of the law, Nevada County has used taxpayer dollars to send mass mailers to the local electorate in support of Measure V, to air advertisements on the radio, and to place additional advertisements in local print media. In fact, the County and Yes on V are unethically (perhaps illegally) coordinating their efforts in support of Measure V.

In addition to these campaign violations by Nevada County, the proponents of Measure V and Nevada County have printed campaign material without proper disclosures.  The law requires political action committees to disclose on all campaign material the name of the committee who paid for the campaign material and their unique FPPC number.  Neither Nevada County nor Yes on V have complied with this statutory requirement.  In fact, both the County and Yes on V printed yard signs without these required disclosures.   An opponent complained to the enforcement agency, the FPPC, who is now investigating Nevada County and Yes on V for these campaign finance violations.  See letter from FPPC to the left.

On the very same day that the FPPC notified Nevada County and Yes on V that they are being investigated for campaign finance violations, Yes on V issued a press release falsely alleging that opponents of Measure V are stealing yard signs which support the measure and that the opposition to Measure V is racist.  Yep.  If you oppose the additional sales tax to the general fund effort known as Measure V, then you must not like people of color and are a racist.  Linking racism to an effort to oppose a sales tax clearly demonstrates the desperation of Yes on V.  They are losing.  They know that they are losing.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the hopeless scream racism about a sales tax measure.

As far as Yes on V's missing signs, we have far more important action items than stealing yard signs from the ill-informed.  Bless the hearts of those who blindly support the scam known as Measure V without understanding anything about the true nature of the measure and have a yard sign in their yard advertising their ignorance.  That said and if someone was stealing signs, shame on you for not respecting our electoral process.  Folks are free to express their support of or opposition to political matters, and it is not for others to infringe upon another's rights to free speech.  On the other hand, I have seen tons of Yes on V signs located not on someone's property but placed in the right of way on our local roads.  Supporters of Measure V have been placing yard signs on such right of way, because most of us know what Measure V is and would not put a sign in our yard in support of it.  When these signs are placed in the right of way, Caltrans regularly takes such signs down, because they are an obstruction.  Above is a picture of their signs at the Caltrans warehouse off LaBarr Meadows.  I would advise the Yes on V folks to head over to Caltrans in order to pick up their missing signs which were illegally placed on our local right of ways.

As has been proven again and again in connection with Measure V, neither Nevada County nor Yes on V has been honest in conducting their campaign in support of Measure V.  In fact, both Nevada County and Yes on V have coordinated their messaging and violated election and campaign finance laws repeatedly over the past months.  Like you, we stand proudly against an out-of-control local government and a campaign committee that both struggle to follow the law and to be honest with the voters.  Send a message to the County that we will not tolerate being lied to and will not be manipulated by the coordinated campaign of Nevada County and the proponents of Measure V.  Vote NO on V.

17th Century and Nevada County's Measure V Collide

What in the name of Hades does Measure V have to do with the 17th Century?  Well, it is the old English common law allowing members of the House of Commons to send correspondences without paying postage, I tell you. 

The U.S. Senate's website provides as follows:

Franking privileges—the ability to send mail by one's signature rather than by postage—date back to the seventeenth-century English House of Commons. The American Continental Congress adopted the practice in 1775 and the First Congress wrote it into law in 1789. In addition to senators and representatives, the president, cabinet secretaries, and certain executive branch officials also were granted the frank.  

Even though the title of the U.S. Senate's article is "Senate Ends Franked Mail Privilege," and as we have seen with Nevada County and Measure V, the title to the article on the Senate's website is highly misleading and does not match the text of the article.  In fact, at the end of the article, the Senate admits that, in 1891, "Congress restored full franking privileges. Since then, the franking of congressional mail has been subject to ongoing review and regulation."  Note the words "congressional" and "regulation."  "Congressional regulation" is also commonly known as "the fox guarding the hen house."  Next time you receive a mailer from an elected representative, double check the required disclosure on the mailer and determine who mailed it to you.  It will surprise you that, often times, the fluff mailer about your elected representative that you received in the mail came from your elected representative, but he used your tax dollars to send it to you instead of his campaign funds.  It is the privilege of incumbency.  Congress codified this self-serving use of taxpayer dollars in 39 U.S. Code sec. 3210 which provides, in part, as follows:

It is the intent of the Congress that mail matter which is frankable specifically includes...mail matter which constitutes or includes a biography or autobiography of any Member of, or Member-elect to, Congress or any biographical or autobiographical material concerning such Member or Member-elect or the spouse or other members of the family of such Member or Member-elect...

So, in short, Congress made it legal for a congressman to send mass mailings to you using your taxpayer dollars in order to provide you with a biography of his wife!  That is what congressional regulation looks like.  Sounds shady and self-serving, right?  It is shady and self-serving, but it is legal both federally and on a state level.  Elected representatives and government officials abuse this codified and very old common law privilege on the regular by using taxpayer dollars to pay postage for these mass mailers which tend to support an incumbent or support the government in general.  

Our ancestors, the progenitors of western freedoms, and in a time without telephones or the internet, understood that our representatives need to freely communicate with the electorate and other people by mail in the course of their representation.  The intent of the common law was not to self-servingly send out tens of thousands of mass mailers to voters on the back of the taxpayers, but rather to necessarily communicate as needed in the regular course of one's representation.  Fast forward to today, communicating with others in the regular course of one's representation is no longer a problem.  Just pick up the phone, send an email, or a text.  Yet unsurprisingly, we still have laws on the books that allow the abuse of the original intent of these laws for the benefit of the government winning elections and not for the general betterment of the people.  

Assuming that Nevada County sending out mass mailers in connection with an election is legal (not sure if it is), it is these very principles which Nevada County self-servingly violated when the County sent a mass mailer using taxpayer dollars to all of the registered voters of Nevada County "informing" them that Measure V is a wildfire prevention sales tax increase.  See mass mailer to the left.  Double check the mass mailer on the bottom right-hand corner and determine who mailed it to you.  The County of Nevada paid for that.

First of all, and as has been discussed here before, Measure V is not a wildfire mitigation sales tax as they pretend; it is, by the County's own admission, a general tax with which the County can do as it pleases.  As such, the County's mass mailer is highly misleading to the electorate and downright dishonest. Second, and relevant to our discussion herein, your Nevada County government (the Office of Emergency Services) spent your taxpayer dollars on a misleading mass mailer which misrepresents Measure V in order to self-servingly try to convince you to give Nevada County another $12 million to be deposited in the County's general fund.  Sounds shady and self-serving too, right?  That's because it is shady and self-serving.

When it comes to elections in this country, the will of the people rules.  The government which results from these elections should be as neutral as Switzerland and completely silent when it comes to the public debate.  The government should never take partisan positions, because they have no vote and no say in how the people decide to administer such government.  Yet as we have seen in Nevada County, time and again, whether it is recalls, election transparency, and Measure V, our local government is not only vocally taking partisan sides but using your taxpayer dollars to do it.  It is wrong and is a gross mismanagement of public funds to spend taxpayer dollars on partisan positions especially when the partisan positions are self-serving to the local government administrators themselves who wrongfully spent your money for their benefit.  Tell the Nevada County government that enough is enough.  Vote No on Measure V. 

Dude. What is going on?

Balancing work and family sometimes makes it difficult to sit down and write.  I write all day at work, and usually by the evening, I am all written out and headed to the gym or to play softball with my friends.  Lately and despite not writing too much, many of my friends have seen my name in the paper or on the radio and laughingly ask me, "Dude. What is going on?"  And my stock answer is "Dude. F___ those guys," and then we die laughing before I explain.  For those who know me well, I am one of the most calm and unshakable people out there.  There is freedom in only truly caring about that which is important and then letting the rest go.  Being the son of one of the biggest shit talkers on the south side of Chicago, what other people think does not bother me.  Go ahead, talk shit.  It motivates people like me.

In addition, you are instantly my friend until you are not by your choice and by your actions.  I believe that all people have an inherent value simply for being alive and always deserve respect until they have proven otherwise.  That said, I gravitate towards people who have sound moral foundations and are strong in their convictions.  Understanding that there is always a gray area around truth, I cannot tolerate outright dishonesty.  Outright dishonesty causes the loss of my respect almost instantly with little prayer of allowing myself to be fooled twice.  So then, the explanation to my friend's question becomes one of honesty.

After my first wife and I divorced in 2015 and because she works for Congressman McClintock, I removed myself from local politics in order to give her space in her world to heal.  We both needed it, and now things are very good.  Remarkably, my wife and my ex-wife celebrate Mother's Day together with all of our children.  My ex-wife is, in some respects, still a part of my life, and it works and is good.  So, when 2022 rolled around, I had not spoken to anyone in local politics aside from comments on blogs for nearly seven years and apparently most of these folks thought that we had moved back to Chicago.

Then at the beginning of 2022, the election office in Nevada County started playing politics with a group of citizens and with COVID, bullying them, and lying to the public about it.  I was given outrageous videos demonstrating how county elected officials and employees were treating its own citizens about whom the County was telling bald-faced lies.  I told all of my friends that helping these folks was a one-off, and I was going to finish my PhD when the mess was finished.  Inevitably, and after seeing firsthand the demeanor and foul character of some of the elected officials and employees, I went a little further and asked Gregory Diaz for a public election record - a copy of Natalie Adona's check indicating that she paid the filing fee for her candidacy for his office.  He straight up refused to give me a public record which he was legally required to disclose.  As I walked out of the election office and after being treated in the same bullying manner with which he treated his constituents in January earlier in the year and in my head, I said to myself, "F___ those guys."  Absent that moment, I would likely be enjoying my life working and studying history, as I had been.  The problem is that I cannot.  Our country is sick.  Our government does not seek the betterment of those whom they serve, but its own betterment.  Our government bullies and mistreats those whom they serve and lies about it.  At that moment on one hand, I was done, and on the other hand, I was just beginning.  So, I sued Gregory Diaz arguing that, if he did not give me the check, his chosen successor could not be on the ballot.  What happened in court?  Simple.  He coughed up the check, because it was required by law.

Salaries and Pensions for Nevada County Executive Staff are Outrageous

A dear friend of mine read about the Measure V litigation in The Union and asked me why Nevada County needs another $12,000,000 in the general fund?  As we know, Nevada County officials are sounding an alarm in an effort to scare voters into believing that the county does not have enough money for wildfire mitigation despite its over $330,000,000 budget.  They are telling you that they need you to pay another $12,000,000 a year because $330,000,000 is not enough to operate our small, quaint county.  As of 2020, the population of Nevada County was only 102,241.  Doing some quick math, Nevada County states that it needs about $3,300 per person to operate our little county.  For a family of four, they need to pay about $13,000 for county services.  For nearly all of us, $13,000 is a lot of money unless of course you actually work for Nevada County in its executive offices.

Let's take a look at the top six non-elected money earners at the County and their combined salary and benefits package from 2021.

The Chief Executive Officer, Allison Lehman, made $409,437.

Chief Information Officer, Stephen Monaghan, made $338,209.

Assistant CEO, Mali Lagoe, made $336,788.

County Counsel, Kit Elliott, made $314,794.

Community Development Agency Director, Trisha Tillotson, made $308,350.

Health and Human Services Agency Director, Ryan Gruver, made $306,109.

In total, these six unelected government officials made a combined $2,013,687 and individually made more than any elected official in the County.  How many people in Nevada County make over $300,000 per year?  I would bet that it is only a handful of the 102,241 people that live here.

I would posit to my dear friend that Nevada County does not need another $12,000,000 per year in the general fund to maintain county services and to pay county salaries and pensions.  It appears that Nevada County needs to better manage the $330,000,000 that they already have and maybe cut some bloated executive salaries and bloated executive pensions.  The hardworking people of Nevada County deserve a local government that serves their interests and not the self-interest of the executives of the very same government.

Nevada County's Measure V is a Scam with Revenue to be Used to Pay Pensions and Salaries

Proponents of Measure V, such as most of the Board of Supervisors, Terry McAteer, and Kit Elliott, county counsel for Nevada County, keep telling the public in the local media that Measure V is a sales tax increase in order to "prevent" wildfires, reduce brush countywide, improving evacuation routes, maintain defensible space, and "for general government use."  The only item above that is guaranteed to happen is that Nevada County will spend the revenue from Measure V "for general government use" including for pensions and staff salaries.  Don't believe me?  Let's look at rare moments of honesty from Nevada County in pleadings filed with the Nevada County Superior Court and the auditor's report.

In their Response to the Writ of Mandate on September 6, 2022, Nevada County argued to the Court that, despite touting in the local media that Measure V is a sales tax increase to be used to prevent wildfires (which is impossible), the county can literally spend the money on anything they desire.  "Here, Measure V is nothing like the tax in Monterey because there are no specific projects that are earmarked for the funds, and the County has discretion to use sales tax revenues to fund “general government services.”  See Response, 12:20-23.  "Measure V is similar to the tax considered in Mendocino because the future sales tax revenues are not earmarked, and can be used for any general county services..."  See Response, 13:4-6.  

Contrary to the misrepresentations to the media by Nevada County and by the proponents of Measure V, revenue from Measure V is not "earmarked" in any way.  The idea that Nevada County will only spend the revenue from Measure V on wildfire prevention is a farce.  It is one thing for the government to lie to the public and to the media, but it is entirely another thing to lie to the Court, hence, the rare moments of honesty from Nevada County.  Indeed, Nevada County will be spending the revenue generated from Measure V on (you guessed it) pensions and salaries for County staff.  Unlike the admissions in court pleadings, this undeniable truth can be found in the Nevada County auditor's fiscal impact statement of Measure V admitting that revenue generated from Measure V will be spent on pensions and staff salaries.

Don't be fooled by the rhetoric coming from Nevada County.  As Rahm Emanuel said in 2008, "never let a good crisis go to waste."  Nevada County seeks to, as found by the Nevada County Superior Court, "play upon the heart strings of the public” in an effort to pass the general fund tax measure.  In addition, the Court also found that the County is counting on higher-than-expected inflation in order to generate even more revenue from local taxpayers creating an even higher tax burden on our local residents.  So, Nevada County is "play upon the heart strings of the public” in order to take advantage of the crisis related to wildfires and also capitalizing on the national inflation crisis to generate more revenue for pensions and administrative salaries.

Based upon the Court’s ruling and the County’s admission during the litigation and the auditor's report, it is clear that Measure V is a scam upon the taxpayers.  Don't be fooled by the rhetoric, because none of it is true.  Vote NO on Measure V.