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An Atomic Bomb: HMB City Council Secretly Aided by Keenan |
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Written by Darin Boville
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Friday, 08 August 2008 09:27 |
Updated 6:31, August 15, 2008.
Chop Keenan, the developer who won the Beachwood lawsuit against the City of Half Moon Bay, has been secretly paying the lobbying firm hired by the City to work on passage of the controversial AB 1991, the bill to exempt Beachwood from all manner of regulations and to allow Keenan to build on the property.
The payments were kept secret from the public, the legislators, and at least one member of the Half Moon Bay City Council--Jim Grady, who brought this issue into the public eye at Tuesday's City Council meeting. [Clarification: Grady did not announce that Keenan was paying the lobbying firm, he just raised the concern that HMB wasn't paying the full fee. HMB Review reporter Mark Noack discovered that Keenan was the source of the funds to HMB's lobbying firm.]
The Half Moon Bay Review has the story here.
In it reporter Mark Noack quotes Kennan as saying, “I just felt like I'll chip in,” referring to the $20,000-a-month secret payments.
In the past Montara Fog has lambasted the City Council for its policy of secrecy.
Noack followed up his first story with another, fleshing out Senator Yee’s reaction to this revelation. Senator Yee was initially a sponsor of AB 1991 until he saw the details. As the bill has no sponsor in the California Senate he remains a key player in the bill’s future.
To Yee the news is an “atomic bomb” and wreaks havoc with the City’s credibility in Sacremento. Yee expressed his dismay with the City leaders: “...it turns out the firm they hired was in bed with someone else...What in the world was the City Council thinking?"
Today, the Capitol Weekly joined the fray with its own take on events. Reporter Malcolm Maclachlan stresses throughout his article that Kennan’s payments went to the consulting side of the firm, California Strategies, while the City’s payment went to the lobbying side. Also, Kennan’s payment’s have ended.
Maclachlan quotes “Kinney,” who is unidentified in the article but who is, according the the California Strategies website, Jason Kinney, the head of the firm’s Strategic Communications Practice, as saying, “Separate and apart from that [the lobbying effort on behalf of HMB], our consulting firm had an agreement to provide strategic consulting advice to the developer. We're talking about different clients, different contracts. No one at this firm has ever lobbied for Mr. Keenan, nor has Mr. Keenan attending any lobbying meetings."
In other words, the firm is hinting that the lobbying effort is not influenced by the consulting effort although it only goes so far as to say that they are not lobbying on behalf of Keenan.
Update 1:02 pm, August 8, 2008
Mark Noack at the Half Moon Bay Review has an update on the question of the distinction between the lobbying contract that the City has with California Strategies and the consulting contract the Chop Keenan had with California Strategies.
Jason Kinney, from California Strategies, repeats his attempt (made earlier in the Capitol Weekly) to separate the two and to claim that there was no conflict-of-interest.
Keenen himself seems unaware of the distinction, saying that he and the City “collectively” hired California Strategies.
Update 5:48, August 8, 2008
Malcolm Maclachlan at the Capitol Weekly has updated his report on the secret funding, placing more stress on the idea that the City’s effort and Keenan’s were separate, even though both were paying the same firm regarding the same legislation.
The article contains a new quote from Keenan that sidesteps the contradiction between his earlier statement which suggested that he was working in conjunction with Half Moon bay’s City Council and those made by Janson Kinney who claimed there was no conflict of interest. Kennan says, “We have a community of interest. The way Jason characterized it is exactly right."
Senator Yee is quoted as continuing to be unhappy with the payments by Keenan, despite all the talk of separate contracts, seeing the payments as a conflict-of-interest.
Update 6:03, August 9, 2008.
Julia Scott, writing for the San Mateo County Times weighs in on the Beachwood Affair and the revelation that developer Chop Keenan has been secretly paying California Strategies to promote AB 1991, the same firm that Half Moon Bay has hired to promote the City’s interests in getting the bill passed.
Scott’s article says that, according to HMB Council member John Muller, none of the members of the City Council knew about the payments before the information was made public by the Mark Noack of Half Moon Bay Review. Jim Council member Jim Grady raised the issue in the public Council meeting after learning of the payments in a conversation with City Manager Marcia Raines.
In the article Keenan says, "I think it's pretty clear that AB1991 is in both of our interests, so I don't know where the conflict is. It's not like the city or I am telling them how to do their job.” He continues, "It was very informal and I decided it was in my self-interest to put some horsepower behind California Strategies' efforts.”
Scott’s also raises the issue of whether California Strategies broke California lobbying law by not registering as lobbying for Kennan. Roman Porter, executive director of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, says, "If the assertion is that the payments aren't to influence legislation or administrative action, then there's no disclosure requirement."
Meanwhile Senator Yee strengthened his public opposition to any version of AB 1991 that he would not support a bill that “would suspend any environmental parameters whatsoever.”
Update 3:42, August 13, 2008
Half Moon bay Review Editor Clay Lambert writes in his op-ed this week that with obvious despair over the latest developments in the Beachwood Affair. In it he points out the various "plugged in" political people that work for lobbying firm California Strategies, recipient of money from both the City of Half Moon Bay and Chop Keenan. His perspective on the fairness of AB 1991 and all that surrounds it is a dim one: "If this [the revelation about lobbyist payments] is a smoking gun, it was fired in March when the settlement was signed."
Update 4:19, August 13, 2008
Mark Noack, only a few months on the job at the HMB Review, has taken the clear lead in reporting on the Beachwood Affair, the major news story of the year.
In today’s print edition he examines the chances for AB 1991 to make it through the California Senate. (AB 1991 is the bill, based on the Settlement between the HMB City Council and developer Chop Keenan, to exempt the Beachwood property from environmental and other regulations.)
Mark Talks with Gene Mullin, the bill’s sponsor in the Assembly and others to make clear that AB 1991 as we know it is dead--it cannot simply be amended since it is the core principles of the bill which are causing opposition to it.
Attention is now turning to ways to mitigate the impact of the $18 million payment to Keenan (which doesn’t include the purchase of soul-mate property Glencree).
Update 6:31, August 15, 2008
Clay Lambert at the Half Moon Bay reviews starts the weekend off with a bang with a report that Senator Yee has offered $10 million toward the $18 million needed by Half Moon Bay to resolve the Beachwood Affair. (The $18 million does not include the purchase of the mysterious Glencree property, next to Beachwood). Half Moon Bay recently received $5 million from an insurance settlement related to the legal costs of Beachwood which, together with Yee's proposal, puts HMB just shy of its goal.
Photo by Darin Boville. This image is of the twin of the “Fat Man” atomic bomb, on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Update: I've added a short slideshow of additional photos of relics from our nuclear arsenal. These might make for good illustrations for future articles on the HMB City Council. |
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HMB's Answers to Sophia: The Art of Saying Nothing |
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Written by Darin Boville
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 11:41 |
Another bewildering Half Moon Bay City Council meeting. Another few paragraphs in the management case study that chronicles the slow-motion disaster that is the Beachwood Affair.
At the last meeting Sophia Freer asked seven questions that struck at the heart of the various mysteries embodied in the Settlement--mysteries that are the source of intense controversy along the coast.
Mayor McClung’s directive to staff to research and answer the questions was a bit of a shock--this Counsel has pursued a policy of secrecy that would make a Myanmar General smile. The public knew more of what was going on during the two weeks in 1962 of the Cuban Missile Crisis then we know now about HMB’s Beachwood Affair.
This week Sophia got her answers. Well, sort of. If you count narrow, technical responses that simply restate the obvious and completely avoid the spirit of the questions as actual answers.
Sophia asked for more background on how the Appeal went from seemingly strong (as described by The Quarterback, John Knox, at the January workshop) to abruptly dropped--when and why was the Appeal deemed weak?
The answer, in essence: It was dropped when the Council voted to do so and they did so based upon legal counsel’s advice.
That’s it. And the evasive, technical answers continued, touching on why the City did not accept support from the Office of the Attorney General and on to how HMB planned to pay the $18 million and what to do with the recent $5 million insurance payout.
The City Council’s misguided policy of secrecy is anti-democratic and tactically stupid. These lawyerly answers to important public questions are nonsense and insulting nonsense at that.
For Reference: Sophia Freer’s Questions
For your convenience here are the questions that Sophia Freer asked. Note that I’ve added in a paraphrase of the City’s answers--these are paraphrases, not summaries (i.e. I’ve simply reworded the answers for clarity, I have not omitted any factual details--there were none to omit).
1. When, why, and by whom were the grounds for a successful appeal deemed to be no longer valid?
2. When did the City Council decide to drop the Appeal in favor of a settlement?
When the City Council voted to accept the Settlement agreement it also agreed, per the Settlement’s terms, to drop the Appeal.Thus, the Council decided to drop the Appeal at the very moment it voted to accept the Settlement.
The City Council based their decision on the advice of legal counsel, and an assessment of merits of the case, the likelihood of an Appeal not being successful, and the liability exposure if the City did not prevail in an appeal.
3. Why did the City register to lobby for approval of AB 1991 ten weeks before the public announcement of the decision to settle and why was the public never informed of this action?
4. Why was the public not told that the Attorney General office offered to help with the Appeal? Surely an Amicus brief from the Attorney General carries a lot of weight and is worthy of mention.
The Council considered the possibility of Amicus assistance but based its decision on the merits of the Appeal.
5. Did the council have any indication that ABAG would cover the costs of past litigation in the Beachwood case? If so, isn’t this something the public possibly deserved to know before the recent press reports and tonight’s report from the mayor?
The ABAG agreement was announced when it was finalized.
6. Does the City have contingency plans to deal with the $18 million dollar payout to the developer if the terms of this settlement can’t be met? If so, what are these plans?
7. Would there be any reason not to apply the $5 million from ABAG and the revenues from the increased TOT to pay off the $18 million fallout if the terms of the settlement can’t be met?
These issues are still under consideration so it is premature to have a public discussion at this point. A formal decision by the Council on how to pay the $18 million and whether to include the $5 million has not been made. |
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The Quarterback Defends the Secret Meeting at the Secret Meeting |
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Written by Darin Boville
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Wednesday, 25 June 2008 13:41 |
Attorney John Knox, whom the Half Moon Bay City Council has designated “Quarterback” in the "Land, Air, Sea" mixed-metaphor Beachwood Affair and to whom they seem to have abdicated all leadership responsibilities, spoke yesterday in the few minutes of open session at the City Council secret meeting. He spoke about the rationale for holding out-of-the-public-eye meetings about a case that was closed over six months ago. (We last saw The Quarterback on video at the Beachwood Workshop where he underlined the strengths of the Appeal. Later the Council reversed course and dropped the Appeal, making the perplexing claim that it was too high risk and too expensive.)
The California Brown Act, the open government law that seeks to limit what governments can do in secret, allows closed meetings relating to litigation only for pending litigation or threat of litigation.
My translation of The Quarterback’s rationale (from legalese to English, an imperfect process) is as follows:
We can hold secret meetings as long as the terms of the Settlement haven’t been fulfilled because if they aren’t fulfilled we go back to the court’s Judgment.
In other words, since even in the best case scenario from the City Council’s point of view (i.e. AB 1991 passes in its original form) it would take years to make it through all of the follow-on lawsuits, this gives the City Council the right to hold secret meetings all they want about any aspect of the case from now through the next election cycle.
Want to know about lobbying efforts? That’s a secret. Want to know what this is costing the taxpayers? That’s a secret. Want to know how they plan to pay the $18 million if AB 1991 fails? That’s a secret. Want to know how we got to where we are today, why the appeal was dropped and how the Settlement was reached? Oh my, that’s really a secret.
Heck, if they have to make payments to Keenan, as spelled out in the Settlement, they can keep the secrets and the secret meetings going for decades.
This may be legal but it is not smart. It certainly isn’t good government. The City Council has a moral obligation to share with the citizens as much information as it possibly can. That’s a high standard--well above “we’ll share what is convenient to share” or worse “we’ll share what serves our purpose.”
If it doesn’t hurt you are not sharing enough.
This strategy of keeping its own citizens in the dark may well backfire when citizens learn the truth in what some of us have been saying all along: That gaining an exemption from all environmental laws for Chop Keenan’s property has an approximately zero chance of becoming law and that the City Council has led the public down the garden path with this strategy.
In hindsight the City Council will try to claim that it was their plan all along to simply raise the threat of such environmentally damaging, precedent-setting legislation in order to bring the Coastal Commission and environmental groups to the bargaining table. They’ll say they are geniuses.
But no one will believe it. Not when hiding the truth has been their policy for these past months.
Video illustration by Darin Boville |
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HMB City Council Schedules Secret Meeting |
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Written by Darin Boville
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Monday, 23 June 2008 19:46 |
In yet another example of secrecy run amok at the Half Moon Bay City Council the Council has announced a closed-door meeting in apparent contradiction to California open government laws.
California Government Code (see chapter 54956.9) allows closed-door meetings under narrow circumstances. These circumstances include pending litigation or threats of litigation. But the Half Moon Bay City Council is citing the federal Beachwood case, which has been closed since December of last year, as the rationale for keeping the meeting out of the public eye. Here is a copy of the Tuesday, June 24th meeting agenda, which was released earlier today.
The Half Moon Bay City Council seems to have lost its way under the pressure of the Beachwood Affair.
I’ve covered the growing secrecy at the City Council before. Recent examples: click here for the mysterious Glencree option and here for some of the many unanswered questions surrounding the Beachwood Affair.
At this point I can only offer the advice given in the Bible, Mark 8:36, regarding the City Council's seeming zeal to win at all costs:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Photo by Darin Boville |
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