Off the Record (Dec 9, 2015)

THE FOLLOWING PRESS RELEASE, which we will fast forward to spare you the agony of gov-prose, has to do with the County's retirement fund and should be read upside down. The last paragraph is the nut of the message, and it reveals that the fund is broker than ever.

"…One of Mendocino County’s key issues, Segal stated in this year’s report, was the unfunded actuarial accrued liability, or the county’s unfunded pension obligation, which Segal said has increased to $182 million from nearly $180 million in last year’s valuation."

OH, and by the way, you people are broke and getting broker every year. Your retirees will die in the cold and the dark, as the actuaries auction off their final few belonging in their front yards.

ORWELL TIME: “KZYX doesn’t play commercials but we do have underwriting, which is very different from advertising. It is a great way to support KZYX and in exchange we will let our listeners know what goods and services your organization offers. For questions about underwriting on KZYX, call (707) 895-2324 or email uw [at] kzyx [dot] org” It's underwriting not advertising, you fools. Sheesh. Can't you make even the simplest distinctions?

THE COUNTY has announced its "balanced budget" for the fiscal year commencing in July. First off, the County is irremediably broke because its retirement fund is in the hole for upwards of $182 million, give or take a few mil, and wholly dependent on who's doing the counting.

AS IS OBVIOUS, most of the County’s budget priorities are financial, not organizational or managerial. As per ancient tradition, Mendo does not use the budget process to prioritize efficient or even measurable service delivery, pretending instead that the good ship Mendo is already a model of civic functioning when in reality, as any consumer of County services will tell you, it’s a mishmash of catch-as-catch-can organizations with little to no oversight. Department heads occasionally appear before the Supervisors. Everyone grins at each other, and the department heads, experienced bafflegab artists, say they're doing a swell job in the wheelroom of the Mendo Titanic as the Supes chorus in unison, "Keep up the great work."

MISCELLANEOUS FACTOIDS: Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, aka Mental Health Services, has 67 full-time equivalent County employee staff members against an allocated 77 — despite most of their operations having (allegedly) been privatized.

AMONG the “Goals/Objectives For FY 2015-16” for mental health in the current fiscal year are: “Continue working with the Administrative Service Organizations to improve and enhance specialty mental health services. “Provide oversight and monitoring of the Administrative Service Organizations.” And, “Continue to provide full‐service partnership slots for intensive ‘wraparound’ support for the seriously mentally ill, who are homeless or most at risk to be homeless, hospitalized, incarcerated or placed out‐of‐county in residential facilities.”

NONE OF WHICH is happening. No mention of the on-going mental health department audit and potential for budget changes based on its outcome. No mention of the possibility of going out for re-bid of mental health contracts. No mention of reviewing the extortionately high rates of administration and overhead in the “administrative service organizations” (cf Ortner Management Group).

NO EXPLANATION of what “full service partnership slots” for “intensive ‘wraparound’ support for the seriously mentally ill who are homeless or most at risk to be homeless, hospitalized, incarcerated, or placed out of county in residential facilities” are or how that will be measured. Hell, I fit several of those categories myself, as do most people.

WHAT WE DO KNOW, however, based on daily observation of the Sheriff’s booking log, that the “homeless” who are “most at risk to be … incarcerated” are not likely to receive anything remotely resembling “wraparound support.”

IN LIVING FACT, the “goals/objectives” for mental health in FY 2015/16 are almost all unmeasurable statements: “continue to work,” “provide oversight,” “increase,” “expand,” “decrease,” “reduce,” and “research.”

THE ONLY SPECIFIC GOAL for this fiscal year is “Opening of The Anchor, a Transitional Age Youth (TAY) Youth Resource Center on the Coast,” which simply goes to show that if they wanted to provide real goals, they could have.

(PS. We can find no reference to “The Anchor” in any other County documents, so this “goal” could be pure budget artifice. There’s “The Arbor,” an inland program run by Redwood Children’s Services which is a “youth-led, inter-agency resource center in Ukiah for youth ages 15-24.” Er, excuse me, since when are people over the age of 18 "youth." In other words, it’s not much more than a drop-in center for mentally ill 20-somethings to hang out — something which, even if set-up, will produce no measurable results and could include several hundred of Mendo’s 20-somethings whether they’re diagnosed as mentally ill or not.)

THE AVA'S ACE Courthouse reporter writes: "Amazing occurrence today in court, demonstrating the scope and power of the mighty AVA. Early last summer we reported a bust in Covelo of a honey oil lab involving incredible amounts of the substance described by converts to the cannabis faith as a cure-all miracle drug. The bust was made by Sergeant Peter Hoyle of the Task Force. Omar Figueroa took the case of one Tyler Smith, formerly of Sylacouga, Alabama. The case was on for a pre-trial conference today, and when Mr. Smith and his lawyer came in they seemed unhappy to see Sgt. Hoyle. This was not usual – Hoyle needn’t have come until the trial date, unless … Unless something was up. Turns out that the real Tyler Smith of Sylacouga, Alabama, had been contacted by someone who read about his bust online (the AVA was the only paper that wrote about his bust, as far as we know) and said, “Hey, Tyler, what’s this about you getting busted out in California?” Tyler went to the article, read it, then called Sgt. Hoyle and explained he’d never been to California. Hoyle ran his fingerprints – the ones of the guy he'd busted in Covelo -- and found out the honey oil man in Covelo wasn’t Tyler Smith at all – even though he had Tyler’s Alabama driver's license. The guy in court turned out to be Preston Alexander Smith, a fugitive from Alabama. His tattoos on his hands say “Outa-bama,” but he’ll certainly be "Inna-Bama on his extradition papers as soon as he gets his time served in Mello Mendo."

ON THE OFF CHANCE you even know who his is, you'll be fascinated to learn that the top two "accomplishments" listed in local Assemblyman Jim Wood's full-color mailer to his constituents are popcorn in tasting rooms and a routine construction waiver for the new Adventist hospital in Willits. Way to go, Jimbo!

BUT THINK OF IT! Thanks to Assemblyman Wood, our proliferating booze boutiques can now sell packaged pretzels, peanuts and popcorn too! Hey. Wait a minute. These neg food value items are kinda down market for the wine people, aren't they? You'd think the tasting rooms would at least go for Planter's Unmixed Nuts.

FOR THE RECORD From December of 1995 through February of 1996, the Clinton administration regarded the support the mainstream enviro groups as of crucial importance in the 1996 race. This concern is duly reflected in the Clinton White House Coffee klatches. On Dec. 15, 1995 two corporate executives who sit on the board of the Wilderness Society sipped coffee with Clinton. One of them was real estate baron Richard Blum–husband of Dianne Feinstein–who is also a longtime friend and sometime business partner of Charles Hurwitz, the corporate raider from Houston who wanted the government to purchase from him at an exorbitant price the Headwaters Redwood Forest in Northern California. The other attendee was David Bonderman, a financier and chairman of Continental Airlines. Bonderman is based in Houston and is also a pal of Hurwitz. Six months after this session, Sen. Dianne Feinstein brokered a Headwaters deal for the administration that was highly favorable to Hurwitz. The Wilderness Society was the only national environmental group to praise the bailout. —Alexander Cockburn, 2008

A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR with a shotgun in one hand and a bucket of dog shit in the other. He says to the Barkeep “Give me a coffee.” Waiter says, "sure, coming right up.” He gets a tall mug of coffee and drinks it down, picks up the bucket of dog shit, throws it in the air and blasts it with the shotgun. Then he walks out. Next day the guy returns. He has his shotgun and another bucket of dog shit. He walks up to the counter and says. ” Give me a coffee.” The barkeep says, “Whoa, buddy. We’re still cleaning up your mess from the last time you were here. What the heck was that all about anyway?” Fella gives a shit-eatin’ grin and says, “I’m training for an upper management position. Show up for work, drink coffee, shoot the shit, leave a mess for someone else to clean up, and then disappear for the rest of the day."

INTERESTING SPECULATION from local Mental Health advocate Sonya Nesch about the ongoing outside audit of the County’s privatized mental health service contracts: “Some think Carmel Angelo's $50,000 Kemper Consulting Group Report on Mental Health will tell the supervisors on December 15th nothing more than: Ortner inherited a mental health services mess when they arrived. Two and a half years is not a long enough time to figure out how to provide mental health services. The Ortner contract is poorly written. Too bad the $50,000 wasn't used to provide some pre-crisis, crisis and rehabilitation support in one of our seven communities.”

THAT’S A GOOD GUESS. Implicit is that Kemper/Ortner will say that Ortner’s exorbitant administrative costs have something to do with the alleged mess that pre-existed Ortner. If the Supes accept this bogus explanation, they will have wasted $50k. (Unless you believe that $50k for a whitewash that just postpones the problem for a couple more years while it gets worse is worth fifty grand of your money.)

A RECENT STORY by Sarah Reith for the Ukiah Daily Journal described the opening night of Ukiah's 46-bed emergency shelter on Mazzoni Street. "All 46 beds had been spoken for, and at quarter after six, guests were still showing up, one or two at a time."

WHEREUPON commenced the homeless industry's new vocabulary, new to me anyway. The homeless people checking into Mazzoni are "guests to be assessed according to a vulnerability index, which determined how many co-morbidities each applicant had. Those with low acuity numbers, or the fewest health problems, were essentially on standby for available beds."

WOW! (1) Guests. (2) Vulnerability index. (3) Co-morbidities (4) Low acuity numbers. This is a lot to learn in one go. I'm still not fluent in "interface" "pro-active" and "paradigm shifts."

A READER WRITES: "Last gasp for the PD. For the last two days, their comments sections are totally gone. It appears they have changed the site look/layout/etc. You said it a while back in the AVA, and I nodded in agreement; the comments were the best thing to come to the paper for. That's not to say they were great, but a few sensible thoughts appeared among the career trolls' many posts. I have no interest in joining that posting parade, but it was amusing to watch. I'm in and out of the PD online in under three minutes now. Hey, it will be good when that paper dies. P.S. If you really want to know what is happening in America, read the PD posts and then go sit and eat breakfast (or have coffee only if you want to live) at McDonalds, and take your time, observing the richly corrupt tapestry of humanity that washes through the place. Much of it is very disturbing. Like the comments in the PD."

RECURRENT RUMORS say Mendocino Redwood Company will probably scoop up Hawthorne-Campbell. Campbell was essentially the purchasing agent for the state of Washington's retirement fund when Campbell bought up Georgia-Pacific's Mendo holding for the Hawthorne Timber Company in the late 1990s. If MRC does the deal they would then own 15% of Mendocino County. Hawthorne is mos def for sale, MRC is mos def interested.

FROM THE PROSPECTUS: "The Hawthorne Timberlands are largely within a single, contiguous block of highly productive forests which typify the unique Redwood Belt of Northern California. The standing inventory, averaging 21.2 MBF (17.7 MBF conifer) short log scale per forested acre, will support both immediate and long-term cash flow. The long term sustained yield is indicative of the future plantation growth potential characteristic of site index 119 timberlands. The blocked configuration provides for fee access control through secure gated access. With numerous domestic log demand centers in Eureka, Scotia, Willits, Ukiah, and Cloverdale, the local market outlook for premium Redwood logs is possibly the most optimistic in Northern California. In addition, multiple export facilities for Douglas-fir and whitewoods can be found in Oakland, Richmond, and Eureka, CA…"

HOLD ON. A knowledgeable guy just called to say he was related to someone who works for Campbell and they say the Campbell Group timberland has been sold to an east-coast outfit called "Lyme Forestry." We looked up "Lyme Forestry" and ended up at lymetimber.com where they declare: “The Lyme Timber Company LP is a private timberland investment management organization (TIMO) that focuses on the acquisition and sustainable management of lands with unique conservation values. Since its founding in 1976, the Company has followed a disciplined and value oriented approach to investing in forestland and rural real estate. The Company’s current portfolio includes over 550,000 acres located in New York, Wisconsin, Florida, Maine, Colorado, Tennessee, Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec.” It's also possible that the timberland isn't for sale, but the Washington State Investment Board (employees pension fund) could be looking for another management company besides the Campbell group…

MANY PEOPLE THINK the primary causes of Coast Hospital’s financial woes are overpaid administrators, costly contracts with doctors, high cost of employee health insurance, too many uninsured patients, and perhaps poor billing practices.

ALL OF THE ABOVE are factors, certainly. But the more crucial and less obvious cost-drivers are the bond payments from the 1996 multi-million dollar remodel that was supposed to provide a seismic upgrade-retrofit but didn’t; insurance company and government caps on reimbursement rates; the high cost of hospital equipment and their upgrades and software. The high cost of pharmaceuticals. Malpractice insurance. Expansions into high-tech medical specialties for which there are not enough patients on the Coast to justify. Too small a patient volume to get price breaks on supplies and equipment.

WE DON'T KNOW the real numbers because the finances of any modern hospital are opaque, to put it gently.

WE ALSO FIND it ironic that the Coast Hospital employees can’t figure out a way to buy the bulk of their healthcare services directly from the Hospital where they work — instead of requiring their employer — the Hospital — to pay exorbitant health insurance premiums to the usual insurance company suspects.

IF YOU'VE WONDERED where ace Mendo prosecutor Paul Sequeira has been, he's been north in HumCo putting away a free range psycho named Jason Warren. Warren recently murdered a woman who was trying to help him. Prior to that he ran over three women out for a morning walk, killing one of them. He was out of jail on some kind of "leave" when he deliberately mowed down the three women, but was supposed locked down for a knife assault on a cab driver and another guy. Why Warren was loose remains a big question.

"WARREN showed no signs of remorse as the verdicts were read. He sat with his elbows on the defense table, shoulders hunched forward as the court clerk read one guilty verdict after another," the Lost Coast Post reported. Of course he didn't. Look at the guy. You think he lays awake at night worrying about his vics?

AND HUMBOLDT COUNTY doesn't have a prosecutor capable of putting this guy away?

THE LATEST EXERCISE in self-delusion from The Press Democrat, annotated by the Boonville newspaper as a public service:

"TO OUR READERS: After months of consideration and discussions with readers about possible changes to The Press Democrat, the new format will debut in your newspaper on Wednesday.

(We can't wait to see what you've done with 'our' newspaper.)

Many of you took the time to participate in reader panels or give us details about your news preferences in a survey that brought in an astonishing 1,600 responses.

(1600 responses in a circulation area of roughly two million is not astonishing.)

You told us that the newspaper is a part of your daily ritual, a trusted information source and, above all, valued for its range and quality of local news.

(We told you no such thing. Ritual? Maybe for elderly shut-ins, but 'trusted information source'? 'Range and quality'? Wrong twice. If you were a quality and trusted paper you wouldn't have to pander like this, as you well know.)

To reflect that (clinical-quality delusion), we are reconfiguring the newspaper to put local news first — literally. It will be played with prominence (sic) on the front page and then continue in the first section of the newspaper, where you will also find state news.

(In other words, same old, same old.) 

The second section will be dedicated to national and world news, because you told us that while you can get this news from other sources you do not want us to become a provincial newspaper that overlooks the larger global context.

(Please. Stay provincial. You're over your head simply writing up Rose City wine tastings. The big pic is wayyyyyyy outta your depth.) 

When important national and international news breaks, it will be reflected on the front page.

(O hell yea. We all go to the PD for breaking news.) 

The second section will showcase the rest of that news from the wider world, with a focus on analysis and perspective pieces that add dimension to the headlines.

(Syndicated hacks from the NYT seraglio and mega-feeb Pete Golis? Are you kidding?) 

In the second section, there will be a consistent home for the features, advice columns and puzzles that now float throughout the paper — something else you told us you wanted.

(Very big among the three children who read the PD.) 

Finally, you made it clear that you valued favorite national columnists for providing points of view that transform mere news into a deeper understanding and so they will continue on our opinion pages.

(Yes! We all need more E. J. Dionne and David Brooks, Christ save us all.)