Is Golonski trying to pull another fast one? (and update)

Buried deep down within tomorrow night’s council agenda is a seemingly obscure little item that could end up having big consequences in the future if their discussion goes in a certain direction.

Dave Golonski wants to talk about the possibility of altering the appointment process for boards and commissions. The way it works now is that the city clerk throws out the different board vacancies in random order. The council then works its way through the whole list in Byzantine fashion until each opening is filled.

This process is complicated and confusing, but it has worked well for years. The only problem with it is that if individual candidates happen to apply for multiple positions, then they may not end up winning their first choice, or that of their council advocate. For instance, if Golonski or Reinke wants someone on the Planning Board but their name gets mentioned for the Parks and Rec. Board first, and they happen to win there, then that particular candidate is out– by Municipal Code you can only serve on one board at a time.

Initially we couldn’t figure out why Golonski wanted to change this rule but that he must have had some favorite go to a place where he’d rather see them elsewhere. This change proposal may sound innocuous on its face but it’s not, and there’s an ominous consequence to the whole discussion as well. It’s not all it seems.

At the end of their report staff notes the following, as an apparent aside:

The City of Glendale employs a nomination process, where every Council Member nominates one applicant from the applications submitted to serve on a board. The nominees are then presented for a vote of the entire Council at the following meeting. The boards are presented in an alphabetical order.

The City of Pasadena also employs a nomination process. All applications are submitted to the Council and one (any) Council Member nominates an individual who is placed on the agenda for a vote of the entire Council. The boards are listed in the order that the nominations are received.

Now Burbank doesn’t do it this way– yet. Instead, we pick from the complete assortment of all applicants to all positions. No one needs to be nominated for anything first — if they win on the initial ballot that’s fine, but succeeding ballots will winnow down the pool until you get the final choices.

But the “nomination” process limits the potential pool from the beginning. And that, unfortunately, is the big idea here. If each council member can only nominate one person for the collective vote, than that makes it much more difficult for a slate of, say, progressive “slo-growth” candidates to ever get on board. If Dr. Gordon or anyone else is limited to only one nominee for each opening, then the possibility of getting multiple candidates of a similar political persuasion would be remote.

And that of course is the real motive behind this procedure. If the candidates must be “nominated” before any council vote, and there’s only one for each, then you can only imagine the kind of political range we’re going to get in that election pool.

Nada. It will be nonexistent.

Staff to their credit says the following:

Staff recommends that the current random order process be maintained, as it does not take into consideration any prioritization criteria, but ranks all the boards in an equitable manner. However, if the Council desires to change the voting order, staff recommends the Council, based on their determination, establish a preferred order to all the boards in the appointment process.

Note however that they refrain from mentioning their view of the “nomination” idea. We don’t trust what’s going on here, and suspect that a pre-vote nomination rule will end up getting sneaked in when no one’s looking. That would be very bad for Burbank and the prospects for any kind of strong ideological change, which we definitely need.

Watch this one closely, because it’s very sneaky. Dave Golonski always thinks he’s the smartest guy in town and he’s been up to no good for months. It’s always something with him lately…

**UPDATE**

Looking through the various boards and commissions, one possible reason for the change proposal could be that the Planning Board has been showing a bit of muscle the last few years. Two of the newer appointments have turned into reflective maverick types who don’t always play to the company line. A pre-vote nomination requirement could prevent such an occurrence in the future, and there is nothing in the law that would stop any council member from comparing nominees prior to any vote to keep the market small.

No, too much monkey business can happen when you require people to be “nominated” first. The same is true of a prescribed order of appointments. Imagine the politics when the council members can start ranking boards and commissions as to their desireability, and imagine how the favored candidates will be able to manipulate their chance for election. If they know what vote comes first then they can craft their applications accordingly.

And talk about being able to hand-pick cronies! It’s obvious that the idea behind this change — if made — is so Golonski will be able to manipulate the process and be more assured to get the traditional Chamber of Commerce or status-quo types in there. The present wide-open system allows all kinds of mavericks to slip on board accidentally, and with less roadblocks.

Don’t believe it? Imagine what would happen if a slate of reform people suddenly started applying for these positions. Right now many of them could get on, especially if they overpowered all the other applicants. But with a pre-vote nomination requirement there ain’t no way. If you have 15 total applicants for the Planning Board, and 12 of them are slo-growth, that’s not the percentage you’ll end up with as council “nominess.” You’ll be lucky if you get one.

And that folks is what’s going on here. It’s a preventive measure being foisted on us by Golonski and god knows who else at city hall. It sews things up.

Prediction? The council will agree to keep the random method, but will seriously entertain the idea of board and commission nominees, in order to ‘make things a little easier for the staff,’ or some such excuse (we can hear Talamantes spouting this right now). But that would be a very bad move for the city, because the net result will be a smaller pool of hand-chosen and vetted candidates. It would circumscribe democracy here in Burbank.

A note about these BPOA and BPD thugs

Just a quick remark about the latest disruption tactics that are coming from the city apologists and other lackeys, the ones who don’t happen to like it when curious outsiders start to rain on their parade. These are the city guys who’ve had it too good for years.

A group of establishment cops and other bound-for-prison Burbank employees have informally banded together under the phony name of “Leonidas” in order to make it sound as if there’s actually another side of the story to this awful BPD mess.

But there isn’t. These guys are fakes whose clear intent is to propagandize against the current spate of BPD plaintiffs patiently waiting for their day in court. The modus operandi of these clowns always takes the form of the classic “concern troll,” where they try to act as if they are really critical of the police department too, just like everybody else, but then they immediately attack anyone who gets critical along with them!

This transparent practice is always a dead giveaway that someone’s working for the Man, but trying desperately to look oh-so-sincerely as if they were the exact opposite. The proof is that if these people actually agreed with the current critical spirit against the department then they wouldn’t be so abusive and kneejerk-hostile every time someone else points out its many problems.

So keep in mind that these guys are complete frauds, as is their assumed name. They think they’re so clever and sharp to be naming themeselves after an old king of Sparta– a pretty wacky group to emulate, by the way, if you know anything about Greek history. But the only reason they know about this dubious character at all is because he was in a friggin’ movie a few years ago.

These guys are idiots, but a perfect example of what we have to deal with here in Burbank. So we’ll keep on printing their abuse as ‘Exhibit A’ of the current municipal mindset. Give ‘em enough rope and all that.

The school employees want a real personnel board, so how about the city?

The news that our classified school employees are now engaging in a bloody battle to wrest control away from their governing board and administrators only reminds us of a similar problem with the City of Burbank. It turns out that the Civil Service Board has been operating illegally for years simply because it has no real power. Under state and federal law the CSB is supposed to have much more authority than they’ve been granted.

Actually, this wasn’t always so. Until about 1965 the CSB had veto power over the city manager and everyone else when it came to employee discipline matters. That’s the way it’s supposed to be– it’s what a real personnel board is all about. But right after an old CSB ruled against the city manager and reinstated an ill-favored employee that he’d wanted to fire, an angry city council retaliated against the board members and stripped them of this powerful role.

Ever since that time all the CSB does is review personnel classifications and take orders from arrogant staff members, with maybe an occasional temporary job extension or two to ratify– to the pleasure of the city.

But note this interesting discussion from last November’s CSB meeting:

MR. SCHLOSSMAN: If I accept that the rules are
conflicting, then the rules need to be — the municipal
code and the civil service rules need to be matched up in
some way, and I imagine that involves the city council
changing — either the Civil Service Board changing its
rules and adopted by the city council or the city council
changing the municipal code to conform to the civil
service rules.
But this is very important for everyone to know.
The Civil Service Board here in Burbank has very little
authority. Over the years the authority has been slowly
and systematically taken away so that we really are not in
a position to ensure the integrity of the civil service
system any longer. We are in the process of revising the
civil service rules to strengthen the Board so that we can
more so ensure the integrity of the civil service system,
and we have had assurances from Ms. Wilke and
Mr. Stevenson that we are necessary and we are
appropriate. The municipal code will also hopefully be
changed to support the revised civil service rules.
But for those of you who don’t know, there’s
really only two areas in this whole system where we have
exclusive jurisdiction. The first is an employment appeal
based on discrimination. Limited areas of discrimination.
That also will be expanded to comply with current state
and federal laws because they are 30 years old and things
have changed. That’s one. The second one is provisional
appointments. And if you read this staff report very
carefully, what they are really saying is they want to
take away the authority of the Civil Service Board over
provisional and temporary appointments also because we
disagreed with management. In this one case they write a
long report, fairly long, explaining why we are so wrong,
we have no authority and, “You must vote yes no matter
what person we put forward.”

[ ...]

Approximately 30 years ago the Civil Service
Board made a decision on an employment appeal, and I don’t
have specifics regarding the appeal, but the decision was
very unpopular with management and, as a direct result of
that one decision, the essence of the Board in terms of
oversight and responsibility regarding employee appeals
and the ability to make a final decision was completely
changed. The final decision-maker at that time was the
Civil Service Board, as it should be; however, with the
dissatisfaction of that one decision, which invariably
happens — you can’t be happy with everything. That’s why
judges have terms of office. In the federal system they
are appointed for life. Sometimes their decisions are
unpopular. I would say 50 percent of the people are going
to be unhappy and 50 percent happy. And the same is true
with this Board. But as a result of an unpopular
decision, the final — the rules were changed, discretion
was taken away from this Board and the final
decision-maker is now the city manager.
I would hope that based on the dissatisfaction of
management in this one decision 30 years later
approximately –
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: ‘65. 1965.
MR. SCHLOSSMAN: Thank you.
– that more discretion not be taken away from
this Board because we barely have any at all.

Apparently, for years our city’s limited CSB set-up has been violating some Civil Service laws and they all knew it. It’s a pathetic joke– they’re supposed to have much more authority in practice. And it was a single board member that spilled these beans to the public– one who is also an expert in Civil Service law, by the way, and who Dave Golonski tried to fire last month.

Surprise, surprise…

Hmmm. So let’s see how bloody this particular fight is going to get when the city manager and city attorney refuse to give up their long-held power. And imagine the problems that a real CSB might have prevented when it came to the unfair and retaliatory disciplinary acts that this same leadership team imposed on their troublemakers over at police headquarters. The safety valve of an authentic, impartial, and fully-functioning Civil Service Board might have made the BPD a much happier place in which to work — at least for the rank and file.

Think we’ll ever get a real Civil Service Board here in town? Who is going to have to sue them in order to get compliance? That’s what it will come down to– it ain’t gonna be a voluntary surrender of power. Just like with the local school board, this one will be a fight to the death.

School employees union seeks Merit System election in Burbank (updated)

Tonight the local chapter of the California School Employees Association took the first step in a long and complicated process to institute what is known in the trade as a “Merit System” of employment within the Burbank school district. This is the second time in about a dozen years that they have sought such a radical change in status, and we wish them well.

For those who don’t know, a Merit System is basically the old civil service procedure, but within the structure of a California school district. The difference between this and the conventional mode of school employment is that a Merit System establishes an official personnel commission that has sole final authority in all hiring and firing decisions.

Things must be really bad in Burbank for the CSEA to want to circumvent school administrators in these conventional decision-making areas. We suspect that the Operations Department has been playing their inept games again down on Shelton Street, and is going after the wrong people for punishment and retaliation. Or that the BUSD is misusing budget cuts as a phony pretext to fire people they don’t like. We’ll find out…

The way a Merit System works is that school administrators can only make disciplinary recommendations about employees that are then subject to the final say of a three-member personnel commission. This board is composed of one pick of the union and one pick of the district, with a supposedly neutral third-party member joining in. If a disciplined employee wishes to seek a hearing on their problems then they can have a final review in front of the independent commission.

In other words, the personnel board or commission has the final word in all disciplinary matters. No longer do the school board members make any terminal firing or suspension decisions, as is the law with the conventional mode of employment, and they can’t rubber stamp arbitrary personnel decisions either, which is the norm. Hiring too is done completely by the book, with test scores and employee interviews ranked numerically. All applicant interviews must be electronically recorded, and the district can only hire people by going down the ranked lists one by one, with little leeway or discretion allowed.

To give you an example of the status-quo system and what some of these BUSD people are about, and why the system needs to be radically changed, here’s what they’ve done in practice. If the administration wants to fire someone then they have to grant that person a hearing in front of the school board, after a preceeding “Skelly Hearing” lays out the specific charges.

But state law only requires that a quorum of school board members be present, which is three people– not the entire board. While in the old days the district’s employees got all of the board members to hear their case, the new tactic is to just assign the three biggest assholes to the disciplinary hearing, which absolutely guarantees a termination or suspension. The poor employees don’t have a beggar’s chance of either a fair hearing or a fair questioning. They also have no one to go to bat for them in closed session, either, during the board’s deliberations.

So naturally, the Burbank school board and administration will be going totally nuts about the mere prospect of a CSEA election, and they will do everything in their power to defeat it. When this same CSEA chapter somehow managed to hold an earlier Merit election about 12 years ago the district went out of its way to hire a high-priced adversarial law firm to bury the movement pronto.

As part of this panicky and expensive effort at union-animus, they required all of the classified employees to attend a number of mandatory “warning” meetings in school auditoriums. Here the employees were threatened outright that if they went ahead and voted for a Merit System and it happened to win, this would mean that an “outside company” would then come in and take over, and they could fire anyone they wanted to for any reason.

This was a blatant lie of course, and a quite illegal one for an employer to make in a union election. But it had its effect. The classified employees overwhelmingly voted down the Merit System in fear and loathing, and the school board’s power was maintained.

Merit Systems in the public school sector are not always great things. Glendale’s had one for years and it’s corrupt as hell– their personnel secretaries would deliberately re-write numerical interview scores so they could cook the books and hire the candidates they wanted. Pasadena would deliberately “un-mail” application packets to outside candidates that they knew would have higher numerical scores than their chosen in-house favorites.

So Merit Systems are not all perfect. But if you have an employer that treats people shabbily, and a lazy school board that just rubber stamps all administrative adverse personnel decisions without review– as does Burbank– then a third-party personnel commission is a great idea.**

Well be watching this election closely. We were appalled at what happened last time, and will make sure that it doesn’t happen again. We’ve been tough on CSEA around here the last few years, and are glad to see that they are finally starting to show some moxie again. Things must have gotten really bad down there … this local CSEA chapter is quite conservative.

And they deserve the best of luck. This one is going to get really, really nasty. Stay tuned.

NOTE:

** To tell you how bad Burbank is, about 20 years ago the school board and the administration were able to sweet-talk both of the employee unions into eliminating the governing board step in the formal grievance-arbitration part of the bargaining unit contracts. This meant that the school board no longer had any say in remedying potential contract violations against an employee, which is actually illegal, as state law describes them as the final arbiter of all employee matters in a non-Merit System.

Back then the school board summarily gave away all of their power in this area to the lower-level administrators– the same ones who are responsible for contract violations in the first place! It was a complete bad faith move designed to thwart contract grievances by making them futile to pursue, and to keep uncomfortable labor situations away from the personal knowledge of the board members.

City refiling case for the Sheriffs; a few DA discussions; and why they won’t give up

The saga continues. We’ve heard that Burbank is desperate to have a third-party validation of their own internal case against those pesky, troublemaking BPD officers, so now they’re trying to refile additional information with the LASO to get that going-nowhere investigation back on track. There has also been a discussion or two with the DA in an appeal not to let Burbank down with their problems.

It’s a mixed bag for the city. Bad publicity over Portos would sink their reputation nationally to a level that’s even worse than it is right now, but the civilians eagerly want as much culpable material as they can get to mess up their BPD plaintiffs in civil court. This has been Barlow and Company’s hamfisted strategy for months, as evidenced in public by the many council mutterings of Anja Reinke and Jess Talamantes. If Burbank can isolate their legal problems to just a few of those supposed bad apples that we keep hearing about, then they think they’re conveniently off the hook when it comes to the bigger, juicier stuff.

Portos is just a distraction, but it’s a convenient one for the city defenders. Unlike the FBI, the Sheriffs are invited in by the Chief to help them investigate a specific problem. That means the city can keep filing and refiling their own found evidence to keep the matter alive for as long as it’s convenient. And we have new leadership, too, which is like pushing the reset button for them.

That appears to be what’s happening this week. The more lower-level police officers that Burbank can throw under the bus, the better they think they’ll look in the end. This is what their long-applauded internal fishing expedition by attorney Kreisler (er, the “investigation”) was about. And they can embroider it all in the name of reform. It’s an odd, cynical, self-serving legal strategy, but hey, that’s Burbank.

“Open the Doooooooor, Jessie!”

Sigmund Freud once tried to extend his psychoanalytic model of the personality to explain general group behavior but with only a varying degree of success. He should have come to Burbank.

Jess Talamantes told a whopper tonight during a council discussion that revolved around whether the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was really worth the one million dollars-plus that the city has allocated to them for fixing all of this nasty police business. But Talamantes had no idea what he was admitting, which made the remark all the more delightful. Dennis Barlow had to jump in and gravely cover for him afterwards when Mike Nolan called them on the revelation, but it was too late.

Freud talked about the idea of a superego as being the governing mechanism that all healthy people are supposed to have that helps them restrain their undesirable impulses. It’s an artificial construct, as is the characterization of a “group” being able to act in some way like an individual, but if we take this old metaphor to its logical conclusion, then Talamantes is the Burbank City Council’s id, and with that other important regulating component unfortunately not making much of an appearance tonight.

Talamantes blurted out that he had no problem paying that “woman” whatever she was worth, because you don’t understand Dr. Gordon, “she” can “open doors” for us, so that makes it all the more worthwhile. Now this admission of her role is no surprise to us here, because we’ve known from the beginning that Debra Wong Yang (the woman) was hired to be a fixer that the city could exploit due to her extensive political connections.

But this was not the stated reason for her original hiring a few months ago. Instead, Barlow, Flad and Company told the council and the public that she and Merrick Bobb were being brought in to help “reform” the police department. You know, clean it up. That sounded great in the newspaper, but we figured out real quick that an actual “reform” effort would not cost a million bucks. No, that’s the kind of money you pay to defend important people from serious accusations in court. That’s criminal defense money.

Talamantes only blurted out the truth tonight about the real reason why Debra Wong Yang was hired. Burbank wants to use her connections, with Gibson Dunn, with the Federalist Society, with the prosecutors, with whoever and whatever works, to get them out of the giant legal hole that they’ve blasted for themselves over the last 10 years. Wong Yang is an expert at this, too, because GDC bought her off a few years ago when she was a federal attorney prosecuting a corrupt Republican congressman in Central California. They gave her a million-dollar signing bonus for quitting the prosecution team, which she did. She abandoned her group and the case soon fell apart.

We don’t think lightning is going to strike twice this time, really, because it’s a different team being run by a different Democratic boss. The best she’ll be able to do is try to pull some strings to help keep Flad and Scott out of jail, if it even gets that far. But there’s about a dozen separate employee lawsuits they have to deal with as well, completely independent of any criminal worries, and unless GDC can actually rig up the court calendars to get sympathetic judges who will dismiss these claims outright without the benefit of a jury trial, then they’re not going to be of much help there.

Debra Wong Yang and Gibson Dunn Crutcher are going to bat for the culpable civilians and not the cops. That’s why they’re paying them big bucks to save their own skins. It’s also why Barlow tried to explain away Talamantes’ dumb remarks tonight, for he was “sure” that this wasn’t what the councilman was trying to say, even though we all know it was.

The only magic that GDC can perform might be with the federal enforcement people who are now looking into city corruption, and we’ll see how well that corny act still plays. It probably won’t any more. But we’re wondering one thing. Where did Talamantes get this idea that these highly paid lawyers can open doors? Where did he hear this claim— at a closed session, maybe?

LaChasse doesn’t like what he sees, and why the Sheriff got out of Dodge

The other day Chief LaChasse addressed a group of retired officers and other interested folks up at DeBell about his first impressions on taking over the BPD. And we can tell you that he’s not a happy guy.

LaChasse told the assembled crowd that the reason the LASO pulled their investigation was because they’d never seen a police department that had so many cross-agendas and unreliable informants as did Burbank, and with such a complete lack of credibility. It was obvious that witnesses were lying through their teeth because they had ulterior motives to either frame people or get off the hook.

The Sheriffs told him that they were disgusted by the corruption and personal double-dealing, and one lead investigator even removed himself from the case because he was so turned off by what he saw.

But the new Chief has assured people he’s going to be tough on these known liars and will get rid of them ASAP. Supposedly, many of the culprits are BPOA officials, those mock-Machiavellians who always show up at the wrong time to do political damage control but are never around when they’re needed. So we can expect a pretty massive BPD termination effort during the next few months.

Apparently, there was little trustworthy evidence that the Sheriffs could come up with as chargeable because few in the department were believable. They also told LaChasse that they’d never seen such a group of whiners and complainers and vendetta-holders. The Chief added that not in all his years had he seen a police leadership that was so willing to throw their fellow officers “under the bus” to escape responsibility, and he compared this to his own opposite experience in the LAPD.

Word from the DeBell talk is that LaChasse can’t trust anyone in the department, and is seeking to bring in outside people to help run the show. That’s a great idea, but given his limited hiring status and the desires of a civilian management team that clearly does not want to let go of their reins, we’re wondering just how far this plan will go.

It pays right now for Barlow and Company to have a police department with everyone at each other’s throats, so whether true reform is possible with this civilian crowd remains to be seen. When things are this FUBAR then judges throw up their hands too, and that’s one thing that Burbank is counting on in court.

And the follies continue. We’ve heard reports that officers who’ve been quietly complaining to LaChasse about longtime problems are getting spied upon at police headquarters and then reported back to the subjects of their complaints, with the inevitable consequences. This must lead to a really happy environment down there– it sounds just like seventh grade, but with guns.

So who and what created this toxic environment, and what can be done to change it? Were things this bad at the old police headquarters? What is it about that late 70s-early 80’s crowd that did this to the BPD, and to the rest of our City government? Were there too many relatives around?

The collapse of the Sheriff’s investigation is good news for the BPD plaintiffs, but bad news for Burbank

It’s all but official. The LASO has made it clear that the Burbank Police Department is so far gone in the FUBAR direction that no one can figure out what the hell happened during the Portos robbery investigation, so they’ve thrown up their hands in disgust. They’re telling people they won’t be pursuing the matter and that a subsequent DA prosecution will not be forthcoming.

Now you’d think this would be great news for the city, but it’s not for everyone. In the topsy-turvy world of Burbank politics this is actually a serious setback for the civilian administrators. They were banking on bad news about Portos because it would’ve helped them to destroy the credibility of the dozen or so police officers that are suing the city for mostly unrelated matters. Many of the names are the same.

Yes, only Burbank could warm up to the idea of having their own police force beat up civilians so that the big guys could escape their serious legal problems. For months we’ve been hearing about how Omar Rodriguez and Bill Taylor and the other officers were actually the bad guys in all of this, and how their separate lawsuits were nothing but phony distractions designed only to save their own skins. Well, we don’t know how culpable Rodriguez or anyone else is about Portos, but they’re apparently not as guilty as the city’s defenders so desperately want them to be.

This of course puts pressure on Burbank’s own “internal” investigation to deliver the goods. There is also an FBI investigation of Portos, too, but we heard that they recently branched out into a concurrent look at city corruption in general. If so then we welcome this good news. We’ve said for years that the real problems in town are created by the civilian overseers, particularly the city attorney’s office, which has been aware of the BPD allegations forever but did nothing about them. If anything, they actually encouraged certain behaviors for expedience’ sake. Like, who else signs off on the daily “use of force” reports?

It’ll be interesting to see what Burbank’s own outside attorneys and investigators discover about Portos. We can probably expect bloodcurdling tales of plaintiff perfidy or whatever else they want to pay for, and a few PR statements about how disappointed the city council is over the actions of these “few” bad cops who just happen to be suing them for discrimination and reprisal.

Their lapdog Leader newspaper will be eager to print the propaganda for sure. But don’t forget that the city once cleared these same guys right before those pesky lawsuits started drifting in last spring, so which version are you going to believe?

So far it looks like Anja Reinke better start looking around for some different “bad apples” to blame. She might want to start with her friends at City Hall.

LaChasse goes after Taylor. So just who’s making policy down there?

Ah, reprisal. It’s a bad managerial habit that once ingrained becomes impossible to root out. And it can be an expensive predilection, too.

We had heard some rumblings last week that things weren’t looking very pretty when Bill Taylor tried to go back to his job at the BPD. We reported last fall that Taylor’s recent lawsuit against Burbank is their worst nightmare come alive, so everyone knew it would be interesting to see the reception if and when he got a doctor’s note to go back to work.

Well, if anyone wants to think that this new Chief LaChasse was going to be a breath of fresh air then they’d better find a gas mask and quick. Reports are that when Taylor showed up for duty this month he was immediately told to turn in his badge and gun, for now he would be exchanging his medical leave for an administrative disciplinary one.

The reason? Taylor is now being formally blamed for mishandling the Portos investigation a few years ago. The only problem is, he wasn’t the guy in charge. Lieutenants Murphy and Dermenjian were handling the lead operations on that particular fiasco and Taylor was just the overseer at best. So Taylor gets suspended and Dermenjian gets a promotion.

Burbank always needs to find a scapegoat when they get caught doing bad things, and what better candidate than the guy who’s also tying them up in court with a lot of bad publicity? Taylor’s forced leave looks like official retaliation for engaging in a protected activity or two– like simultaneously filing a discrimination claim with an outside agency along with his lawsuit — and as Burbank’s chosen method for dealing with these kind of problems has always been hamfisted then nothing should surprise anyone about this sleazy move.

The only disappointment is that it came so quickly into LaChasse’s tenure. It makes you wonder who’s calling the shots downtown to see such an obvious reincarnation of Chief Stehr and his adversarial tactics. Do we blame him? We’ve heard that LaChasse has lost a substantial amount of good will over this stunt within the department and the lawyers obviously don’t care how bad it looks. LaChasse wants a new assistant from the outside so we’ll see how that goes over with City Hall.

As we’ve been saying for months, it’s the civilians who make bad policy at the BPD. They encourage illegal behavior to get quick results and then try to pin the grief on the little guy. And if a big guy with a conscience ever says anything about this practice then he gets it too.

We also understand that the Sheriff’s Department investigation has basically fallen apart and they will not be reporting back any charges. Why should they, really, and why should the DA ever want to tangle with that Federalist Society crowd over at Gibson Dunn? They can make life difficult for law enforcers who also happen to believe in the prospect of a future legal career. Just ask Debra Wong Yang. Our theory is also that Cooley doesn’t want to get near Burbank because it’s just too sleazy and could drag them in as well, i.e., Dunn and other shenanigans. Cooley’s office also goes back to the Vineland Boyz operations and who wants to open that very similar can of worms? (Wong Yang was deep in that too).

The retaliation fest continues. The officer who initiated the formal “no confidence” vote against Stehr last fall is now being accused by the City of “perjury” for forgetting the details of a traffic ticket he once issued (it was dismissed). The attorneys and the top brass apparently don’t believe his story about not being able to recall all of the facts of the case, and are now claiming that he is deliberately lying to– we guess– make sure that the halls of justice come crumbling down.

Why any cop would deliberately perjure himself over a mere traffic ticket we can’t understand, but that kind of official accusation is typical Burbank logic. They think everyone is as sneaky and evil as they are. It’s so convenient for them.

More news. Assistant City Attorney Julie Scott is reported to have had a pacemaker installed a few months ago, and everyone knows she’s had to delay her retirement in order to fix the mess she helped to create created. The same with Dennis Barlow. And the city attorney’s office is still harassing people who are sick or have family members with problems, by taking advantage of the state law that indemnifies them from ever being held to account for bad-faith prosecutions (that’s why Barlow often initiates enforcement actions against residents rather than the specific agencies– you can sue the agencies but you can’t sue him). We’ve got a story coming up on this sleazy practice, too.

We’ve also been told to watch the skies in the future for some really big news that’s going to make the City of Burbank extremely unhappy. Watch the skies.

For a fun little review of how nasty these people are, we thought we’d reprint the official city response to the news of Taylor’s lawsuit. Apparently not much has changed with their $1.2-million dollar “reformers” on board– they’ve turned this attitude into direct policy:

Statement on Lawsuit Filed by Former Deputy Police Chief Bill Taylor
BURBANK, Calif. (September 23, 2009)

We are extremely disappointed that Former Deputy Police Chief and department veteran Bill Taylor would file a lawsuit with such baseless and disingenuous allegations. His personally vicious and inflammatory accusations are absolutely false and we are confident they will be proven so in a court of law. Unfortunately, Mr. Taylor has chosen to deal with his own personal career disappointments with a lack of leadership and professionalism.

The City intends to vigorously defend this case and seek all available and appropriate sanctions, including court costs and attorney’s fees, against Mr. Taylor for filing this false and frivolous lawsuit and defaming the reputations of the City and Police Department.

Mr. Taylor has so far refused to cooperate in the City’s attempts to investigate his charges. The City administration, including the City Manager and the Police Chief, are committed to the thorough and complete investigation of all aspects of alleged police misconduct. Regardless of this or any future litigation, the public safety and welfare of our citizens remains the top priority of the Burbank Police Department.

Did the Burbank YMCA block that Fitness Center from locating at Mervyn’s?

During tonight’s council hearing on the proposed Empire Avenue fitness center, the project’s applicant revealed the big news that this location was not their original choice. Prior to this site they had strongly considered both the old Circuit City building and one floor of the now-empty Mervyn’s.

They had once been in the process of negotiating with Crown to locate at the mall, and had even gone as far as commissioning architectural renderings at some expense. Crown was agreeable to the plan, and told the outfit that they would soon poll the anchor merchants to see their reaction.

According to the gym’s spokesman, at the “eleventh-hour,” Crown suddenly refused to ask the anchors what they thought about the idea. Instead, the landlord claimed that any big fitness center at Mervyn’s would take up too much parking from the others, so they rejected the proposal outright and without any warning.

This reversal made little sense– until we started thinking about it. There’s plenty of parking at that mall. So why would any eager landlord say “no” to a prospective tenant who had already shown great interest in the empty site and been encouraged to do so?

And then it dawned. The clouds opened up. Guess who is right across the street?

Because there’s no way in hell that our local YMCA would ever dig the idea of a private gym with better and hipper facilities moving right next door to them as kissin’ cousins, it doesn’t take J.S. Mill to figure out what happened. The Burbank ‘Y’ has great political pull in town, and even the husband of the former development director has gotten involved with them when they needed a new project here or there.

The Fitness Center is obviously pretty disgusted with Burbank. Can you blame them? Petty, small-town politics creates a bad climate for business, and it gives us an awful reputation in the outside world.