[UPDATE at end] When Orange County's supervisors huddle this afternoon for a hastily called secret meeting apparently to fire or reprimand County CEO Thomas G. Mauk in the wake of the sensational Carlos Bustamante sex scandal, the supes might want to also boot one of their own.
Back in 2007 when then-county Public Works Department director Bustamante was in the middle of his alleged seven-year sex crimes spree against female employees and Mauk was either asleep at the helm or purposefully oblivious, then-Supervisor John Moorlach made sure the CEO could continue his mismanagement for another half decade.
Los Angeles County supervisors made an offer to lure Mauk away. Mauk accepted, going so far as to write and deliver a resignation letter. LA officials celebrated their move in the press.
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OC could have been rid of Mauk in January 2007 and hired an on-the-ball
manager with a zero tolerance stance about sexual harassment. But in
alliance with then-Supervisor Chris Norby, Moorlach couldn't
stomach the thought of the county government without Mauk. He fretted
and whined and bitched and begged. He wanted to know what it would it
take for him to stay.
Mauk, no dummy bureaucrat, said he wanted
an eight percent retroactive pay raise. Moorlach, who laughably
considers himself a keen negotiator, refused. Eight percent was out of
the question. Instead, the supervisor offered him 12 percent in
retroactive raises, about $10,000 in additional benefit perks and a
five-year guaranteed contract extension.
[This bizarre,
suspicious phenomena is similar to a car salesman offering to sell you a
car for $50,000 and you insisting that he accept your $75,000
counteroffer.]
Back to the Bustamante mess: On Monday, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas arrested Bustamante, who is a sitting Republican member of the Santa Ana City Council, and charged him with 12 sex crimes allegedly committed in his county job from 2003 to 2011. The accusations are so serious that Bustamante faces a potential 26-year prison sentence if he's convicted at a future trial.
But
unlike Rackauckas, Mauk looked at the disgraceful sex scandal and
pretended Bustamante deserved a taxpayer funded gift. Instead of doing
the right thing–immediately firing him at the conclusion of two,
related county personnel investigations, Mauk handed him a bonus.
Without having to work another minute, Bustamante collected more than
than $30,000 in extra pay and benefits after he was outed as a potential sexual predator.
The absurd rationalization
inside the often soiled Hall of Administration? It's one of those
we-burnt-down-the-village-to-save-it-arguments. The CEO claims he paid
the bonus to financially protect taxpayers in a deal that blocks the
accused predator from–get a load of this crock–suing the county for
being unfairly removed from his job.
You can stop laughing/crying now.
Back
in reality, it's no secret that the CEO in OC has two overarching
tasks: make the temperamental, elected supervisors look brilliant as
often as possible and, when disaster hits, shield the five bosses from
incoming negative flak.
In the Bustamante case, the supervisors are not waiting for Mauk to hit the front line in a Secret Service-style
position. They're shoving him forward. But regardless of the CEO's
incompetence or callousness to the plight of the abused female
employees, his demise won't be the result of a frontal assault. He'll
likely be knifed in the back.
The primary assassin–a bearded
physical giant with shameless political self preservation sensibilities, ironic pronouncements about personal responsibility and the title of Chairman of the Board of Supervisors–will pretend he
and the rest of his colleagues are innocent victims and that once again
they've done everything they could to protect the public.
Will
they also tell us that Mauk miserably failed at his job but–like
Bustamante–is deserving of a generous, post-employment bonus package?
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.