It was fun in a creepy sort of way. Normally moribund Fountain Valley, the self-described “Nice Place to Live”, wasn’t at all accommodating to outsider Troy Edgar last week when he faced off in a one-on-one debate with his 72nd Assembly District opponent, Business Executive Travis Allen. Before last Thursday, the only loud noise heard in this semi-retirement village was Bushard Street being ripped up for the third time in a generation for a new sewer pipe. FV once had a gun-toting Councilman, but no large bore weaponry could have defended Mayor Edgar from the knockout assault on his credibility Thursday last.
Arranged by the 405/605 Tea Party group, the debate (that was recommended on this blog months ago) was a surprise since the Edgar Campaign had previously refused to engage its opponent, figuring, we figure, that Mr. Allen, the unknown President of his own successful wealth management firm couldn’t possibly have a chance against Hizzoner, a City Councilman and revolving Mayor from a burg of 12,000+ people with six years of political experience, an expert on high-speed rail and the Chair of the County Sanitation District. But obviously something had changed (like Allen scoring key support in the Vietnamese community, recruiting former Assemblyman Van Tran as an adviser and raising some serious money), so Edgar must have decided he’d better debate after all and wipe the floor with this upstart preppie — just like Obama would handle Romney.
As the Head Flush at OC San, nobody knows his poop like former Democrat Troy Edgar. Touting his experience throughout the debate, the political rookie opposing him wouldn’t know the difference between a tax and a fee. That came up right away when Edgar was challenged to explain why, as Assembly Candidate, he’d promised NOT raise taxes, but is right NOW doing exactly that in Los Alamitos. Well he couldn’t, and certainly after Allen quoted verbatim to him a statement he’d made in that morning’s perfectly timed OC Register editorial recommending failure for Measure DD: “he’s doing a “sales job…we [the Los Al Council] want this to pass; so we put it in terms the common people can understand”. Edgar does know the difference between a land line and cell phone, as it’s the latter that’s being hit with a five percent tax by DD (and it may not stop there), but neither he or Moderator Deborah Pauley ever got back to his contention that it’s a FEE and after all, you pedestrians, he didn’t promise anything about them. Experienced politicians understand these subtleties, particularly those that are very adept at lying.
Allen justifiably pounded Edgar for not signing Grover Norquist’s ATR Pledge which commits
the candidate to oppose any and all tax increases. When confronted, Edgar dismissed the Pledge as a gimmick, and instead makes a personal commitment to not raises taxes — even though he’s done precisely opposite over one dozen times in his six years on the Los Al Council.
But by far, the real drama in what had morphed into a 90-minute Troy Edgar Roast was his opponent’s assertion that he was a criminal. Allen jumped on the R. Scott Moxley/OC Weekly piece posted just the week before which alleged Edgar’s fraudulent campaign expense reporting, potentially a Federal offense.
To cover up how little money his Assembly campaign is raising, Edgar had deliberately misreported a large expenditure for a mailer and some tchotchke he was handing out to commoners. Moxley had him cold, and when Allen presented him the issue, he turned a shade of purple that couldn’t even be found on Microsoft’s 256-color chart. Allen had his facts down — he summarized Moxley’s allegations to Edgar: 1) illegally paying for the campaign material with his own corporate funds, 2) not reporting the transaction, and he added 3) using the expense as a corporate tax write-off.
Edgar, Pauley, Pauley’s finger and Allen
Credit: John Crandall, FV Patch
Edgar knew it would come up, but he didn’t have an answer. Pauly fumbled for a moment, leaving an opening for Allen to continue to press the issue and demand an answer. All the Mayor could say was “it doesn’t deserve a response”. The issue was left unanswered, like a turd floating in a punchbowl.
Troy Edgar’s resume of lies and problems is growing. With four weeks to go, his finance reporting anomalies aren’t going away. Edgar’s opposition is too smart and too energized to not go for broke, and the Mayor’s running out of money and friends to counter this “rookie” who’s simply the better candidate.
There are over 400 thousand folks in the 72nd District that deserve better than Troy Edgar.
The heading may as well read “Let them eat cake”. This has been his attitude since he came to Los Al. As a resident I would have been happier to have had Marie Antionette in office instead of Edgar. Don’t let this guy poison Sacramento like he has poisoned our town.
Edgar’s great “experience” started when he moved from Rossmoor to Los Alamitos, right next door to resigned Councilmember Ron Bates. Ron Bates was great friends with George Briggeman, who once owned Briggeman Disposal. Briggeman Disposal had help the solid waste franchise agreement in Los Al since his father before him owned it (it had never been put out to competitive bid) and had sold it to Republic who had an LLC called Consolidated Disposal run it.
Anyway, George liked this young whippersnapper and even though George was a consultant to Republic (per Republic) he helped fund Edgar’s entry into Los Al City Council with what had become the most expensive campaign in City History at that point.
So, the first experience Edgar seems to have had was how to get someone with a financial interest to fund your campaign. How did Briggeman have a financial interest? Well that solid waste franchise agreement was coming due three years out, and in order to get the three assured votes needed to get the contract, the waste guys NEEDED at least one person from the city council race Edgar first ran in to get elected, and they wanted one who would be able to return the favor of getting him elected.
Now let’s jump forward in time to just short of three years later. and the then council majority (pre-Edgar majority) decided to change the City Municipal Code to require a competitive bid process with the “lowest responsible bidder” getting the exclusive solid waste franchise agreement. Now we have a problem for Edgar. The franchise has to go out to bid and must be given to the “lowest responsible bidder”, But what if that wasn’t Republic’s CDS (who had funded Edgar’s first campaign)?
How about Edgar and his new majority just ignore the :lowest responsible bidder” portion of the Municipal Code and award it to CDS anyway? Well, that’s just what Edgar and his majority did. And some citizens sued the City for doing so. After winding it’s way through the courts Judge Banks of the Superior Court finally ruled in favor of the Citizen’s and against Edgar and crew. Judge Banks gave them a great deal of leeway on how to remedy the violation of the Municipal code. But I doubt that even Judge Banks thought that the contractor would help the City Attorney re-write the Municipal Code to that the “lowest qualified bidder” requirement was removed.
Edgar and his majority did just that. They used the contractor inspired changes and made them the law. At the same time, now that they changed the law to allow them to give the award to the company that helped re–write the law to their benefit, Edgar and his crew voted to re-affirm the contract that charged business’ in Los Alamitos 100% more for bin collection than the Lowest Responsible Bidder’s offer.
So, I guess that Edgar does have experience, just the kind that skirts the law.
But this whole piece was supposed to be about taxes and fees. And although charging business’ 100% more for the service is bad, it doesn’t qualify as a tax except maybe under the most broad sense of the word.
So why all this backgrounder? Well let’s look at the contract. There is this rather interesting component in it that wasn’t in the bid process.
Edgar voted once to approve this contract, changed the code to allow and then voted to award a second time. There was one section that Edgar touted as great for the city that said that CDS will ensure that the City of Los Alamitos will get a minimum of $75K/yr in sales and use tax; and if it was not $75K, well CDS would just write a check to the city for the difference in what was sent in through the Board of Equalization and the magical $75K number.
So, we would have a assured $75K/yr from CDS in Sales and Use Tax. Sounds great doesn’t it?
The problem is that only the Board of Equalization can collect sales and use tax. That means that the difference between the amount paid to the city of that 75K by the BoE and the magic $75K balance is NOT sales and use tax.
So, if it is NOT a sales and use tax, then what is it? Just what did Edgar vote for (twice) and change the law to get? What did all this great experience get the citizens of Los Alamitos?
Well, if it is a tax, then it is a tax paid by CDS that is from the revenues collected by CDS from all the ratepayers. That would be a violation of Prop 218; creating a new tax paid by the people that the people didn’t get to vote on.
That would be the first question for Edgar. Did you create a new tax on the people of your city in the solid waste franchise agreement without putting that new tax to the vote of the people?
While I don’t see Edgar admitting to that, the other alternative is not much better. If it is NOT a tax, then it is what is generally referred to as a kickback. The only question then would be if the kickback was a bribe or an extortion, and to know that all the drafts of the contract would have to be reviewed to determine when the kickback was entered into the contract (the city: extortion; the contractor: bribe).
So, just what did all that experience get the community of Los Al? It gave us a lawsuit that cost over $400K. It has given us a new tax that we didn’t vote on (the Prop 218 violation) or a City Council majority led by Mr. Edgar that voted to have a kickback to the city in a contract TWICE.
Mr. Edgar likes to say how proud he is of the contract with CDS, one that he fought for. How great it was for the community. It overcharges business 100% compared to the Lowest Responsible bidder; some would consider that a business tax. It either breaks Prop 218 by creating a new tax on the ratepayers, or it contains a kickback in the award. This is Mr. Experience @ work. This is the same Troy Edgar who started his political career taking trash money, and delivering the goods.
My guess is that he would respond “It doesn’t deserve a response” to this criminal activity – just like his FEC actions.
One last thought. Is it fraud of a public document to knowingly sign the minutes of a meeting that state something happened that actually didn’t? If so, Mr. Edgar has experience doing that as well.