As the old saying goes, elections have consequences.
For Bob Deis, the county administrator, it was his job. It's
not yet clear if the same fate awaits Steve Donley,
Deis, who stepped down today, has been at odds with county employees and county retirees for at least a year. Cuts in retiree health benefits and a tougher negotiating stance at the bargaining table made for difficult - perhaps poisonous - relations.
His departure was engineered in closed session and announced in a press release. Details eventually will leak but the politics aren't hard to sort out.
One of the new board members - Shirlee Zane - was elected with cash and support from public employees. She was skeptical of Deis' approach during the campaign and has voted against staff recommendations on several items, most notably during the recent budget hearings.
Valerie Brown, who narrowly survived a challenge in
November, also was critical of some of Deis' recommendations. And so was
Supervisor Mike Kerns, who has announced his own plans to step down. The other new board member, Efren Carrillo, also raised questions about the approach to employee health benefits during the campaign. He also joined Kerns and Brown in asking about the cost of outside legal counsel during the recent budget hearings.
Of course, Deis' ouster does nothing to change the county's financial situation. It remains to be seen if a different administrator will ease tensions with county employees.
In
Donley, who is widely respected in local government circles, recently requested a performance evaluation from the council. Will that end the same as today's session between Deis and the Board of Supervisors?
-- Jim Sweeney
It is the overpaying of county employees and the bennies they were given that has put the county on the brink of bankruptcy. And yet the elected officials who were bribed by those receiving the outlandish salaries etc turn on the one person who tried to correct their incompetance!
I wouldn't go so far as to say Efren Carrillo was elected with public employee union support. Efren was victim of one of the dirtiest campaigns in Sonoma County history funded by $125,000 of SEIU money...now I think many of the union hierarchy are seeing the error of their ways.
As to Zuma's posting that Bob Deis was the one person trying to reduce the bennies...not so, Im afraid under Bob's watch this last year alone they gave another $40,000,000 raise to County workers, much of it upper tier, at the expense of the rank and file. Go to:
http://sites.google.com/site/savesonomajobs/
I wish Bob Deis well. He was a very able administrator but the economy ultimately has exposed the house of cards the County's system has become.
Rohnert Park's problem is the Public Safety chief, not Donley. When he said he wants to first cut the school officer and the special enforcement unit, I knew he was just another bureaucrat. Those two units are responsible for the low crime rate in Rohnert Park, not the high number of officers and multiple fire stations manned 24/7 by cops. Public Safety is the big cost item and could be the means for huge cost savings - enough to totally pull Rohnert Park out of the fire if a non-bureaucrat were leading. It's a tough call yet an easy fix. You know it Rohnert Park.
You're correct. I wrote that too quickly and have gone back this morning and revised. Carrillo has raised some questions, but clearly the employees favored Rue Furch in the fifth district.
In regards to the County employees salarys and "beenies" that put the County into bankruptcy, come on do you believe all the smear articles you read? When an Administrator wants to use $100,000, taxpayers dollars, for a system of recruiting executives in such a time of financial crisis, don't you think some miss-spending of money could actually be the cause? I'm a County Employee and I qualify for many things as "low-income". And in regards to the PD article today about the Board wanting a
"Mr. Personality", come on use some common sense. We should be happy that our County (because I am a tax payer too), has a Board of Supervisors now who are really posing questions and looking into how our money is being spent. We don't know any of the details of Deis's departure, there may be a whole lot more to it than the Board just not "liking him". When a family goes broke it's usually due to over-spending.
Bleys Rose column on Thursday's front page has me at the boiling point. How many of us wouldn't want to quit our jobs and still continue to be paid full salary for a year, plus inappropriately quality for a higher retirement that others will pay for. Either to your job and get paid, or quit and find another job, but don't try to tell me what is happening is ethical or legal. Couple that with the AP article on Friday re Walter Forbes divorce ploy. To me these are both fraud, it's just the dollar amount of the fraud that's different. This should be actionable by the State Attorney General against both Deis and the County Board of Supervisors!