UPDATE, JAN. 30, 3:54 P.M.: Orange County Superior Court Judge William Monroe today denied former public administrator John Williams' request for a temporary restraining order aimed at getting him back into his county office.
In other words, the locks that were changed after Williams left his office last week remain.
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The judge set a March 13 hearing to determine whether the county Board of Supervisors, which ordered the changing of the locks on Williams' office, properly removed the bumbling elected official.
Williams' own attorney testifies to his client's incompetence, confirming that he did send the board a letter of resignation. Williams later changed his mind, according to the mouthpiece.
UPDATE, JAN. 26, 11:50 A.M.: He may not know his way around Orange County's public administrator office but give bumblefuck John Williams
credit for finding his attorney's shadowy lair. For that has allowed
the incompecraut to have legal papers filed in his name which could lead
to his un-retirement. An Orange County Superior Court judge is
scheduled Monday morning to hear Williams' request that the county be
forced to reinstate him as the county official who oversees the estates
of those who left no heirs.
As reported in the original post below, Williams was assumed to have left the office Monday as per an agreement with the county Board of Supervisors. But he showed up for work anyway, so the County Counsel sent Williams a letter ordering him to stay away and the locks to his office were changed.
Voters first elected Williams the county's elected public administrator in 2003, and he most recently won another term, through January 2015, in 2010. The board traditionally appoints the public administrator the county's public guardian, which handles the affairs of the elderly and indigent who have no one else to care for them.
But the board and two grand jury reports have found Williams so utterly incompetent that a new manager was brought in to assume the public guardian role. When it comes to public administrator, which Williams proved most inept at, the board cannot legally remove him because he's an elected official. However, amid the political pressure he agreed last year he would step down as of Monday, and a second manager was brought in to serve as public administrator.
Now Williams is calling bullshit on that deal, claiming he never retired, the county is out of order–YOU'RE ALL OUT OF ORDER!–thus the writ of mandate filed to stop his removal. With any luck, he won't find the courthouse.
ORIGINAL POST, JAN. 25, 5:01 P.M.: Before Kimberly Edds left the Orange County Register for
the even darker side–public affairs director of the Association of
Orange County Deputy Sheriffs–we'd admired from blog-far her coverage
of John Williams' implosion as Orange County's public
administrator/guardian, which oversee the indigent and the estates of
the deceased with no heirs. After scathing rebukes by the grand jury and
Board of Supervisors, Williams was stripped of the guardian role, and
he agreed last year to leave his administrator office, which is managed
by someone else anyway, by Monday. That apparently didn't happen.
The Voice of OC's Norberto Santana Jr. reports that Williams showed up to work, which prompted his receiving a letter from County Counsel
Nicholas Chrisos:
The Board of Supervisors accepted your resignation as Public
Administrator of Orange County effective January 23, 2012, upon
receipt of your letter of March 9, 2011. . . . The Board has fulfilled its portion of the obligation. Therefore, the purported oral notice to the CEO and to me
via your counsel that you desire to rescind your nine-month old
resignation, is not effective. Your final salary check and any leave payout will be mailed to
you at your address on file. The CEO will separately determine the
need to retain your services as a consultant.
Incidentally, the board had approved changing the locks of what was supposed to be Williams' former office.
An interesting wrinkle to all this was a response to Santana's post from Todd Spitzer, who is campaigning to re-join the Board of Supes.
“Is this really a shocker that the disgraced, former, PA/PG John Williams would refuse to leave despite his written promise to resign effective Monday?” Spitzer writes. “He should have been walked out of the County once it completed its outside audit of his mismanagement practices, pension spiking and inflated salaries. The County had to replace the locks to keep John Williams out. Unbelievable. We have had Mike Carona, Chriss Street and now John Williams when the County is supposed to be more accountable.”
Don't forget Mr. Bankruptcy hisself, Bob Citron.
Spitzer, of course, has a personal interest in this. He was fired from the district attorney's office after having the gall to call Williams on behalf of a crime victim. Spitzer's boss Tony Rackauckas deemed that contact inappropriate and canned Todd-o. Soap operas seem to be dying everywhere but downtown Santa Ana: Williams' No. 2 was Peggy Buff, T-Rack's fiancee at the time.
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When the shit hit the fan regarding Williams' mismanagement of the office, Buff was demoted–if that's what they call what happens to someone deemed incompetent who is transferred to a six-figure job in another county agency which, like all others countywide, is experiencing a hiring freeze.
As the world turns: Spitzer makes no secret that he wants to leap frog from county supe to DA once T-Rack finally calls it quits.
“I was let go because I uncovered a needle in a
haystack which led to another OC scandal involving a lot of high powered
political figures,” writes Spitzer under the Santana post while, one assumes, scratching the big “S” on the uniform he wears under his dress shirt. “If I had to do it all over again I would.
Yes, I lost my job and jeopardized my family's security. But I
maintained my dignity, my reputation for standing up to corruption and
intimidation. I did it then and will do it again in the future as your
County Supervisor.”
You can't pay for political advertising like that. Actually, you can–and someone should consider running it during The Young and the Restless.
Previous coverage:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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