Summary: The Cathedral City city Council has mishandled from Alpha to Omega the filling of the vacancy created by the death of the late mayor Greg Pettis. From Councilman John Aguilar’s butt dumb emails to city Council applicant and former mayor Stan Henry, to the city’s shortsighted refusal to hold a special election, to the threats being murmured by city “cheerleaders,” and loyalists of former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, this process has bereaved the city Council of much of the trust it once enjoyed in the community. My own communications with Mayor Mark Carnevale, in which I urged upon him the abandonment of the appointment process and the calling of a special election have brought many angry people out of the woodwork, and I expect to be doxxed, threatened, and perhaps even referred to the State Bar for having had the temerity to exercise my First Amendment guaranteed right of petition.
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My late grandfather, the one from El Paso, Texas, never suffered fools well. When someone did something spectacularly foolish, he would turn to me, and addressing the by my childhood, say “Curly; that fellow isn’t just dumb, he’s butt dumb.”
Butt dumb soon came to represent for me an expression of utter disdain, far beyond even wintry disapproval.
Right now, Cathedral city has availed itself of a process described by blogger Casey Dolan as a “dumb plan.” to try to fill the vacancy on the city Council created by the death of former mayor Greg Pettis.
Instead of honoring the manifest sense of the voters that the city should be divided into electoral districts for the city Council, and instead of letting a normal democratic process play out, the four surviving members of the Council decided to substitute their wisdom for that of the 10,000+ residents in District 1, where late mayor Pettis had resided.
The council’s butt dumb idea might have worked but for a number of serious flaws in the execution. The Council, guided by legal advice that ---in the view of this attorney of 30 years experience— comes close to constituting, if not constituting, gross legal malpractice, chose to open the process up to at-large applicants from the entire city, rather than doing the right thing and restricting it to applicants from District 1.
The Council then compounded its error by accepting a variety of solicitations concerning the identity of the prospective appointee. Former mayor Kathleen DeRosa, easily the worst mayor in the city’s history, and her claque of intransigent loyalists, including particularly auto dealer Andy Jessup, began banging the drums on behalf of former mayor Stan Henry.
At this point, the “draft Henry” campaign might have looked like nothing more than exercise in poor form and political grandstanding. That was before Councilman John Aguilar stuck his oar into the process, and in so doing, fatally tainted it. In a series of ill considered emails, Aguilar reached out to former mayor Henry with what appeared to be an implied representation that there existed three votes on the Council to appoint Henry to the vacant seat.
In doing so, Aguilar ---who owes his initial arrival on the Council to the partisanship and support of the late mayor, who secured his appointment to succeed Councilmember Sam Toles, who left the Council in the middle of his first term to take a more lucrative position in Manhattan— managed to cast significant doubt on his own integrity and to raise a very real possibility that there may have been criminal wrongdoing involved.
At all events, Councilman Aguilar has behaved in a manner entirely inconsistent with his obligations to the public, and, given that we now live in a #metoo-influenced political culture in which a single tweet or inconsiderate utterance constitutes grounds for removal, he should, once the special election is over, tender his resignation from the Council. The Council is not a place for politicians with actual or apparent ethical compromise.
After Aguilar’s emails became known in response to a Public Records Act request from a resident, the metaphorical defecation hit the ventilation. Full disclosure: I myself am one of the 14 applicants who put in an application to be appointed to the vacant seat. I am declaring, and will reiterate that declaration this evening, that I will not accept an appointment which may be proffered by the Council as a result of this tainted process, and I call on each of the thirteen other applicants to do the same thing.
In the meantime, blogger Cindy Uken, reporting in the Uken Report, reported on an email sent by “a resident” late yesterday evening to embattled Mayor Mark Carnevale. Immediately speculation began to swirl as the identity of the resident. KESQ/KPSP on air weather personality Patrick Evans, a resident of the same district as Mr. Henry, asked on Facebook, in a sort of nice-car-you’ve-got-there-it-would-be-terrible-if-anything-happened–to-it tone of vague and implicit menace, who the “resident” in question happened to be. The obvious impression of Mr. Evans’ request, and of the tone in which it was couched, suggested that it was Mr. Evans’ intent to “doxx” the resident in question, i.e., to make public disclosure of private information, after the manner of Fox News and the Bernard Sanders campaign during the 2016 Nevada state Democratic convention.
Let me preempt Mr. Evans, end the speculation, and put Mr. Evans’ employer on inquiry notice.
I am the resident who wrote the email to Mayor Carnevale.
The email, which, the truth be told, was a difficult document to write, was written from one friend to another, from the man who first encouraged Mayor Carnevale to seek elective office, and supported him in that initial bid.
The email was, in truth, somewhat remonstrative in its tone; as Mark’s friend, I felt I had earned the right to speak with absolute candor on an issue where the Council clearly needed to hear from someone with institutional memory who has served two terms on the city Council himself. It usually takes a friend to convey an unwelcome or inconvenient truth: “it takes an enemy to speak ill of you and a friend to tell you about it.”
In my email, the text of which is set forth below, I pulled no punches, spared no rods, and set forth for Mark what I thought the consequences of going forward with an appointment might be. I urged upon him the course of action I urged in a previous post in this blog on the necessity for a special election. Specifically, I urged him and his colleagues to abandon the appointment process, call a special election, and limit that special election to candidates and voters within District 1 itself. Anything else, I suggested, would be a slap in the face of the approximately 10,000 residents of District 1, and an equal insult to the democratic process.
The members of any body politic, from the Mayflower Compact of 1620 to the city of Cathedral City nearly 400 years later, must be able to have confidence in the integrity of the processes by which policy is developed and implemented, and by which representative vacancies are filled in our public institutions of self-government. Like the United States itself, Cathedral city enjoys a republican municipal form of government. Our elected representatives are temporary custodians of the res publica, the public thing that is the joint possession and inheritance of every single member of the body politic.
Unfortunately, Councilman Aguilar has forgotten the duties incident to his custodianship of our public thing. He seems to have forgotten the responsibilities laid upon him, indeed he voluntarily assumed, when he took the oath of office prescribed by Article XX of the Constitution of California, subscription to which is a nonnegotiable precondition for executing any public office in the state of California.
In my email, which I will stipulate was written with ill-disguised passion, I spoke with candor and unease about the situation in the city that, until now, I have been proud to call home. I have been implicitly threatened on Facebook by Patrick Evans, I have been called an asshole by Haddon Libby of the Chamber of Commerce, also on social media, and I expect further such threats or possible State Bar referrals following the publication of this post. It pains me to think that I may never again enjoy the good food and hospitality of Mayor Carnevale’s Italian restaurant, with which I became so well acquainted when my offices were located immediately above his kitchen, and where the aroma of calamari and other Italian goodies used to rise to torment the tastebuds of an overweight man starting about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
Yet, when all is howled and done, as much as I might not want to, the recent testimony of disbarred attorney Michael Cohen before Congress today has reminded me that sometimes ethics must come before social considerations. I wrote my email to Mark Carnevale as an anguished friend, not as a political rival seeking to score points. The ball is in Mark’s court: either he and his colleagues can do the right thing, abandon this feckless and now fatally tainted appointment process, and call a special election limited to candidates and voters in District 1, or they can face the voter revolt and possible recalls I predicted in last night’s email. I hope, for the sake of all of us in this public thing we all call home, that Mayor Carnevale and his three colleagues will do what is right, even if it is not expedient.
The text of my email follows:
Mark, old friend, this is a hard email to write.
I think you’ve seen the coverage of the donnybrook that has blown up over the appointments process to fill Greg’s seat. It is a donnybrook for which you and your colleagues must take responsibility, or potentially face a revolt from the citizens of Cathedral City
Unfortunately, John Aguilar -who owes his initial incumbency to an appointment that you opposed- has really screwed things up. Frankly, old friend, I think John needs to leave the Council after a special election to fill the vacancy in District 1.
John has arrogantly and foolishly placed the entire Council in an untenable legal and political position.
Unfortunately also, Mark, I don’t think your remarks to KESQ today helped to clarify the situation.
The coverage shows you saying “If you're asking me is it unethical -- I wouldn't have done it I I don't think I was probably the proper thing to do but by no means that it show which way he's going," while you also steadfastly maintained that there was “no collusion.” Mark, your denial of any “collusion,” does not appear credible in light of what we know transpired between John and Stan. (emphasis added)
Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of understanding of basic political optics on the part of you and your colleagues.
When we originally spoke about this matter over luncheon, for which by the way Sonja and I are deeply appreciative, you expressed to me a desire to move this process along as quickly as possible. However, the method chosen by the Council has led the Council into a zone filled with landmines which John has apparently insisted on stamping on and dancing on, which has now blown up in your faces.
I am also concerned that what has happened constitutes probable cause for a possible criminal Brown Act investigation either by Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin or by Attorney General Xavier Becerra. An investigation by either the district attorney or the Attorney General can be expected to expose the city to all of the embarrassment of a criminal probe, together with substantial unnecessary expenditure. Additionally, the city must also consider the possibility that the same Malibu law firm that threatened litigation to force us to adopt districts will seek to file a civil suit against the city sounding in fraud and in bad faith.
Moreover, the costs of defending either a Brown Act lawsuit, a lawsuit challenging Stan Henry’s right to serve, or a lawsuit from the Malibu attorneys will probably exceed, by orders of magnitude, the estimated cost of the special election. As a local taxpayer, I know what my preference would be under such circumstances, and I, together with many taxpayers, would object to the spending or our dollars on such litigation defense.
Also, if members of the Council had institutional memory that only Greg Pettis, Bud England (who is keeping a very low profile nowadays) and I have, you all might have realized that the city Council can function effectively for a number of months as a body of four. Permit me to recall to your remembrance how in 2004, when Kathleen DeRosa was elected mayor, her council seat became vacant. The Council had initially thought to fill the vacancy by appointment, but deadlocked 2-2. We therefore called a special election in 2005, wherein the late Chuck Vasquez was elected. Between December, 2004, and June, 2005, we met, and governed, as a Council of four. This precedent should have been before you, and it should have turned you from the error of wanting to fill the Council vacancy with foolish haste. This is what I tried to warn you about at our luncheon. Too soon old, too late smart.
Old friend, what the city Council seems to have forgotten is that there are people in this community who have served it before, who have institutional memory, who have never brought upon the city a whiff of scandal, but whose knowledge and institutional memory the city scorns. Your appointment of Sergio Espericueta as Mosquito and Vector Control District trustee was an insult. Gary Howell or I, as former trustees, would have made much better trustees then a Walmart mechanic with no knowledge or experience.
Unfortunately, old friend, you and your colleagues have created a perception that this city Council is nothing more than an old boys club seeking to perpetuate its membership by co-optation. That itself is an insult to democracy, and it is an insult to the voters in District 1, to whom you should be giving a preferential option.
I am disappointed, old friend, in John and in the rest of you as well. You are better than this; you should not have allowed this kind of nonsense to occur on your watch.
In all friendship, Mark, I think it is my duty to warn you that from what I have heard, there is substantial sentiment for a recall of the entire Council. In order to avoid the messiness of a potential recall effort against the four of you, you should immediately abandon the appointment process.
Instead, you should call a special election at the earliest possible time for the earliest possible date. That election should be limited to candidates from District 1. Further, John Aguilar needs to be referred to the District Attorney or the Attorney General for ethics violations.
I would prefer to see Cathedral city know continuity of government rather than experience the chaos of a recall of the entire Council. But given the apparent indifference of the Council to the voters of District 1, any course of action that does not include an immediate abandonment of the appointment process and the calling of the special election limited to voters and candidates in District 1 will probably result in exactly the chaos many of us fear.
Do the right thing, old friend. Abandon the appointment, call a special election, and secure John Aguilar’s resignation from the Council once the election is over.
Yours,
Paul S. Marchand, Esq.
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