Torrance City Council – A Town Hall Style Conversation About Local Politics

Patrick Furey Jr. has resigned from the Torrance Unified School District (TUSD) Personnel Commission. The news was confirmed via an e-mail by new Deputy Superintendent Dr. Tim Stowe who released an internal memo on the subject.

Furey Jr.’s position on the Commission had come under fire due to his role in a political scandal involving illegal campaign contributions to his father’s 2014 mayoral campaign that led to a $35,000 fine by the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC). Furey Jr. served as his father’s campaign manager during that election campaign.

The incident resulted in Furey Jr. stepping down earlier this year from his role on the City’s Traffic Commission just prior to when the Council was to hold a vote on whether to oust him. In his resignation letter, he said that “these sad political attacks on the Mayor and my family are embarrassing our City.”  He also lamented that:

“Now the most extreme elements of our City – people who literally do nothing but complain, make vicious public attacks about people they don’t even know, and write racist and homophobic blogs – call all the shots. Now they can move on to just attacking my father and leave my family out of it.”

Furey Jr. was initially appointed to the Personnel Commission in December 2012. His father had previously served in the same role from 2006 to 2008. Furey Jr. was re-appointed to the position in December 2015 and his current term does not expire until December 2018.

The Commission was established to ensure favoritism and nepotism are kept out of the District’s hiring practices and that employees are hired based only upon demonstrated ability and not on who they know. Furey Jr. was appointed to the Commission by the California School Employees Association (CSEA) Chapter #845.  His mother, Teresa Furey, is still currently listed on CSEA’s website as its First Vice President.

CSEA has 15 days from the day the position became vacant to publicly submit a new name to fulfill the remainder of Furey Jr.’s term.

Last Tuesday, the Council voted by a 6 to 1 margin to extend the McCormick emergency transportation and billing services contract for another year. McCormick received a ringing endorsement from Fire Chief Serna as data provided by the City showed they had met or exceeded contract expectations, including the critical response time requirement of 92% as reflected in the table below.

Councilman Milton Herring, the lone nay vote, expressed concerns about McCormick’s involvement in past campaign finance violations and said he wanted the City to undertake the Request for Proposal (RFP) process so they could evaluate other potential bidders.

Councilmembers Griffiths and Ashcraft joined Herring in expressing reservations about the contract, but ultimately approved the extension indicating their belief that there was insufficient time at this point to complete the RFP process. They also noted that they had recently voted to release a solicitation seeking other vendors for the service, but that such motion brought forward last April was not approved by their colleagues on the Council.

During her comments, Councilwoman Ashcraft stated:

“I have consistently voted against the City’s contract with McCormick Ambulance because of what I have perceived as a “pay to play” situation involving them during the election campaign of 2014 that got them the contract … It’s regrettable to me that McCormick thought they had to pay to play in order to get the contract, because I believe they would have gotten it other than that.”

Resident Linda Gottshall-Sayed, who previously served on the Ethics Commission with Mayor Furey, forcefully reminded the Council during the meeting that McCormick and the Mayor had broken the law and also urged the Council to seek additional vendors for the service in the future.

Prior to the vote, Mayor Furey acknowledged an e-mail received from former Councilwoman Maureen O’ Donnell wherein she wrote to the mayor, “Because of circumstances well known to you, please be honorable and recuse yourself from voting on the McCormick contract.”

With regard to the issue, Mayor Furey solicited advice from City Attorney John Fellows who responded by saying:

“There is no legal requirement for recusal here. To the extent that the request for recusal hinges upon campaign contributions generally speaking those are not considered an economic benefit to an elected official.”

Fellows made no comment on the unusual arrangement in which McCormick paid Mayor Furey’s FPPC fine and whether that relationship arose to a conflict of interest requiring recusal. Fellows has also thus far declined to pursue any action against the Mayor for violations of municipal law revealed in the Fair Political Practices (FPPC) investigation.

Perhaps due to all the hoopla surrounding their involvement in the 2014 election, McCormick was much less visible in the recent 2016 election. Required post election disclosures did reveal, however, three $1,000 contributions made to the campaign of Leilani Kimmel-Dagastino from representatives of McCormick. These contributions were made in late June 2016 after the election had already concluded. Dagastino was endorsed by Mayor Furey and the public employee unions, but ended up losing despite outspending all of the other candidates.

The post election financial disclosure also revealed another $14,846 payment to RFC Communications bringing the total paid to that firm to nearly $50,000. RFC appears to be the latest incarnation of Patrick Furey Jr’s political consulting firm due to it sharing a phone number, address, and client list with Furey Jr’s prior firm Liberty Campaign Solutions. Dagastino had hired Furey Jr. to work as her campaign manager, but tried to distance herself from him during the campaign by saying she only hired him to design some print material.

Furey Jr. resigned from his post on the Traffic Commission earlier this year after public outcry due to his role in the events that led to McCormick and Furey being fined $35,000 by the FPPC. In his resignation letter, he blamed extreme elements of the City he referred to as racists. In similar fashion, Dagastino attributed her campaign loss to racism as well as a “hate campaign” that was waged against her.

Furey Jr. still serves the City and its schoolchildren through his role on the Torrance Unified School District’s Personnel Commission. That Commission is designed to ensure favoritism and nepotism are kept out of the District’s hiring practices and that employees are hired based only upon demonstrated ability and not on who they know. Furey Jr. was appointed to the Commission by the California School Employees Association (CSEA) Chapter #845.  His mother, Teresa Furey, is still currently listed on CSEA’s website as its First Vice President.

The Optimized Street Sweeping Program is once again coming before the Council this Tuesday. At the meeting, the Council will decide whether to implement the ticketing program for the remaining half of the city that has yet to see the increased signage. The program was initially discussed and approved at two meetings held in mid-2014. At the time, the city sold the program to a skeptical and disgruntled public using the following talking points:

Talking Point #1: We are being forced to do this.  We have no choice.

“We have very few options here.  We’re not doing it because we want to spend money…This is an environmental thing that is mandated that we do.  It is not something we just came up with as our own idea.” (Mayor Scotto, April 22, 2014) 

“The State Water Board has established criteria and they have allowed us no leeway.” (City Manager LeRoy Jackson, April 22, 2014) 

Talking Point #2: Not doing it will lead to hefty $10,000 per day per location fines.

“If you pick and choose what you will do, and then they [the Regional Water Board] decide too much is going down the storm drain, it doesn’t matter what we say we’re getting fined and $10,000 a day is a lot of money.” (Mayor Scotto, April 22, 2014) 

“A failure to comply with the regulation will result in a fine of $10,000 per day per location of each violation.” (Deputy Public Works Director Craig Bilezerian, May 20, 2014)

Talking Point #3:  All cities, not just Torrance, are being forced to comply.

“I sit on a Board for a lot of the cities in LA County … In all of the discussion from other cities I haven’t heard one thing that is different from what we are doing.” (Councilman Brewer, May 20, 2014) 

“This is not only Torrance. Everybody is doing this.” (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

Talking Point #4: The city will not make money off the parking tickets.

“I’ve heard a lot of comments where people say we are just doing this to raise money. That’s the furthest thing from the truth, the furthest thing.” (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

“A parking ticket [fine] is evaluated on how much it takes to write the ticket and buy the equipment.  In theory that’s the exact cost it takes the city to do it so if we reduce the fine, the city would actually be losing money. (Mayor Scotto, May 20, 2014) 

Talking Point #5: This will lead to cleaner streets.

Evidence is mounting, however, that these talking points are nothing more than propaganda pushed by the city in an effort to pacify residents who are upset with the proposed program.

The City of Rancho Palos Verdes, for example, continues to operate a Street Sweeping program where streets are swept only once per month and where streets are not lined with no parking for street sweeping signs. How can Rancho Palos Verdes continue with a much more lax program if supposedly the Torrance program is a mandate that every city is doing? How come Rancho Palos Verdes is not subject to those same $10,000 a day per location fines?

The answer to that may be that those fines are really only an idle threat as they have yet to materialize in Torrance despite the program being over 2 years behind schedule. Indeed, Councilman Goodrich had an exchange with city staff last December that appeared to contradict the city’s previous position on the subject.

The discussion at the time was whether the Council should suspend the issuance of street sweeping parking tickets during the Christmas holidays. Goodrich queried staff, “My understanding is that the fines we could be faced with should we exceed our TMDL’s are not yet in effect, is that correct?”  Public Works Director Bob Beste responded by saying, “Yes, that’s correct. They are not in effect.”

In another severe blow to the city’s stance, it would appear the increase in tickets has led to substantially more money in city coffers. The staff report for the item notes a 141% increase in the number of tickets issued since the program was implemented as they went from 6,801 citations in 2014 to 16,416 in 2015. At the $44.34 rate that the city receives for each ticket the amount equates to $727,885.44 received in 2015.

This increase in revenue has apparently come with no corresponding increase in costs to administer the program as the the same staff report acknowledged that:

“There have been no increases in staffing in both the Public Works and Police Departments, nor has the city added vehicles to its fleet since the program inception.” There are no proposed changes to do so.”

Questions also exist as to whether the program has actually even led to cleaner streets. At the April 2014 meeting Public Works Director Bob Beste claimed that the street sweepers were already cleaning 220 tons of trash a month (which amounts to 2,640 tons a year). The current staff report states that the city was only able to clean 2,570 tons in 2015. Other, more technically based studies, have also criticized the efficacy of the program.

The city also initially claimed that the entire program would be funded through a $1,745,800 grant received from the proposition 84 Stormwater Grant Program and matching city funds of $517,866.04 from the Sewer Enterprise Fund. They now require an additional $809,300 from the General fund and another $145,293 from the Sewer Enterprise Fund to finish implementing the program. The completion date has also moved out from the initially planned date of December 2014 to the currently planned date of February 2017.

The significant increase in cost to implement the program as well as the cause for the 2 year delay were not explained in the city staff report.