Did Dwight Robinson lie on his Ballot Statement?

Did Dwight Robinson lie on his ballot statement?

That’s the question the City Council was supposed to address last week, but Robinson’s BFF Mayor Andy Hamilton didn’t put it on the agenda. Hamilton thought the agenda was already too full with such critical items as City Council minutes during closed sessions, and cancelling a meeting that’s a year in the future.

Hmmm.

Keep in mind that Hamilton owes Robinson. Robinson appointed him to the Planning Commission, and then endorsed him for City Council. In fact, Robinson did more than endorse him – Robinson gave him $1,000 and got his developer friends to cough up another $30,000+.

Last year Hamilton partially paid back the debt. Robinson’s behavior was under scrutiny for referring to another member of the Council as a “moron”, “imbecile”, “vengeance seeker “and a “liar”. It was the most egregious example of poor taste and unethical behavior from a Council that is the most dysfunctional in the City’s history. Hamilton chose to bite the bullet and say this behavior was acceptable. He refused to reprimand Robinson for his comments.

Now he’s paid on his debt once more by postponing the discussion of Robinson’s alleged lies on his ballot statement.

Before we discuss the truth behind Robinson’s alleged lies here in 2016, let’s review Robinson’s record with regard to his promises in 2012. We have nearly 4 years of data to see how truthful Robinson is. Here’s the record:

• He promised to “…create a Traffic Commission” then voted against it.
• He promised to “…ease traffic congestion…” then voted to increase traffic congestion.
• He promised to “…open more schools to lower class sizes” but not a single new school has been opened despite more than 2,000 new homes being built and 2000+ new homes being approved. In fact, one school has even closed.
• He promised to “…make Lake Forest friendlier to businesses, creating more jobs.” but in fact he’s voted against giving preferences to Lake Forest businesses and voted to eliminate commercial property, removing jobs from the City.
• He promised to “…reduce pension benefits for future city employees” but he voted to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in raises and bonuses to City employees, thus increasing our pension liabilities.
• He promised to “…oppose wasteful city spending” but instead he refused to vote to ask City Department Heads to cut the fat from their budgets which could have saved the city $2,000,000 per year, refused to re-bid a street sweeping contract that could have saved the City $250,000 per year, voted to give OC Animal Care a 10-year contract without knowing how much they would charge and with no limits on what they could charge, etc.
• He promised to “Work actively to prevent any Jail Expansion and stop the transfer of high risk violent offenders to our family-friendly community” but Robinson did nothing to stop the jail expansion, and in fact the expansion is underway.

Robinson broke all his promises and often did the opposite of what he promised to do. Click Here for more details about Robinson’s broken promises.

Robinson’s broken promises are just one example of some of his characterological flaws. He’s been caught in public lies several times. For example –

• He lied about the costs of Police services in Lake Forest and in Irvine, in an attempt to exaggerate the costs for Irvine and under-represent the costs in Lake Forest. Robinson was trying to say that there was no point in investigating whether Irvine could replace OCSD as our Police contract because Irvine’s costs were so much higher than ours. They weren’t.
• He lied when he accused Councilman Adam Nick of saying a racial slur. In turns out the people to whom Nick supposedly made the slur all denied that it occurred.

All of this is background, but it doesn’t say whether or not he’s lying on his ballot statement here in 2016. We’ll go into detail about that next time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a town hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be in November at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.