What Price Do You Pay for Good Government?

What price do you put on good government? What price do you pay for elected officials who can look you in the eye from the City Council dais and tell you the truth? What price do you pay for City Councilmen who will listen to the people and not the special interests who contribute to their campaign funds?

Once again, blogger “James Ross” is drawing attention to a molehill.

Using a pen name, Mayor Andrew “the Dictator of Deceit” Hamilton wants residents to fear the personal money Councilmen Adam Nick and Jim Gardner have contributed to the recall and general elections.

“James Ross” is complaining about $20,000 recently contributed to the campaign, and $50,000 in 2016. Given the quality of service the City Council has provided residents the past couple of years, I’d say that’s a bargain. Have Nick and Gardner asked you for money? Have they held $100 per plate fundraisers so that you can bankroll a campaign that, through their own business acumen they can finance themselves?

Heck, these are businessmen you want on a council, not a sit-on-your-hands do-nothing follower who married into his position and resorts to trying to gain a competitive advantage by overloading 758 cargo containers before putting them on the road and endangering thousands of motorists – all to make an extra buck. Dwight Robinson’s company, Los Angeles Harbor Grain Terminal, paid $64,402 in fines for that one.

More than 80 percent of the contributions to Robinson’s campaign have haven’t come from himself have come from special interests and developers. For Nick? None.

For a better government, one that will listen to a room full of people and actually try to fix a dangerous road, Nick and Gardner are putting their money where their mouth is. They wholly endorse a change on the Council, the reelection of Nick and the election of Leah Basile in place of Robinson.

And who can blame them. Not once has Robinson or his two other “Gang of 3” members, Hamilton and Scott Voigts, broken off and been part of a 3-2 vote with Nick and Gardner.

Nick has voted with the Gang. Gardner has voted with the Gang. But no member of the Gang has ever voted with Nick and Gardner. Ever!

Is that not a red flag? Is that not sending a message that the Gang of 3 is unwilling to work with or explore ideas that will save the City money or provide solutions to problems?

Robinson had a chance to support Nick when he sought to pay off the City’s accrued pension liability, but Robinson and Hamilton balked. A year later, Robinson was all for it when Hamilton suggested the same thing.

For four years, Robinson has been part of a Council majority and could have gotten anything passed that he wanted. He should have a record of accomplishment that’s a mile long. Instead, he championed nothing while in office, except to demonize Nick once they had a falling out -- and that’s because Robinson’s repeated rezoning of land for real estate development. Robinson’s listed achievements are primarily on the coattails of previous councils. Seriously, taking credit for the $105 million budget that was 25 years in the making? Trying to take credit for eliminating Mello Roos? (How much less than the required tax did each homeowner pay once Robinson “helped eliminate” Mello Roos? The answer is $0. Everyone paid what they were supposed to pay and political opportunist Robinson is taking credit for it.)

Robinson voted for the City to stay with the county’s high-kill animal shelter, Orange County Animal Care, for 10 years for untold hundreds of thousands of dollars annually – and give away nearly $1 million to the county to help build a new facility in Tustin in which Lake Forest will have NO OWNERSHIP. While other cities have been fleeing OCAC, Robinson fought for it against residents who showed up at City Hall begging for him not to cast a vote for more animal deaths. Those who wanted to leave OCAC had representation probably 20-1 over those who wanted to stick with the killing machine.

Yet curiously, despite it being one of the four major issues of his tenure, Robinson fails to take credit for it on his political mailers. He wants to take credit for everything else, why not that?

Because he got it wrong. Because it was an unpopular decision. Because if every resident in Lake Forest who could lose their pet and then have it killed in Tustin were to vote against Robinson, he would have no chance of winning.

Yet Robinson’s vote to stick with the County purchased him the endorsement of officials higher up the Republican food chain; four county supervisors have endorsed him even though he failed to bring any of his published campaign promises from 2012 before the City Council for consideration. But they “get along.”

If Robinson was an athlete, he’s in a slump that would have him sitting on the sidelines.

And that’s where he should be, on the sidelines. He shouldn’t be making decisions on the future of Lake Forest. He’s in the back pocket of developers and has given them a free pass from Day 1. The first thing he did after taking office in 2012 was ask to place on the agenda the rezoning of the Auto Center property; the developers there had helped Robinson get elected, and they had curiously stopped their development plans to wait until after the 2012 election.

But Robinson wouldn’t put on an agenda the discussion of how to fix Saddleback Ranch Road when people there rightly thought someone was going to get killed.

Nick and Basile have said what they’re going to get done in the first 100 days should they be elected. It includes working to get the City out of the OCAC contract, begin reconstruction of Village Pond Park, create a Traffic and Parking Commission; and reevaluate the new home building and stop mass development that impacts traffic, schools and infrastructure, per the Opportunity Study Area guidelines.

So Nick and Gardner are all-in to change the makeup of the City Council – and thank goodness!

If Robinson is gone and replaced by Basile, this City has a chance to end the corruption and cronyism that has plagued it since Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts have become Republican lapdogs.

People should be able to take good government for granted, and in Lake Forest, that can’t happen in its current state. Nick has proven he will stand against the majority. Gardner has proven he will hold others accountable.

And a vote for Nick and Basile will ensure the people once again have their voice.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.