Parke Place

Dear Journal,

Thank you for your recent coverage of Councilman Glass's (now defunct) rental inspection ordinance. Allow me to add a few points to some quotes from your article.

Quote 1: "A crucial element to [a similar ordinance] in Rancho Cordova, population 61,000, has been education and outreach -- something that may have been fatally lacking in the approach taken by Glass' task force."

This is somewhat of an understatement, as Glass and his task force met and drafted the ordinance in secret. The public was neither allowed to observe task force meetings nor to comment on its proceedings. The public was not given a draft of the ordinance prior to said draft being placed on the agenda for approval on April 21.

Dear Eureka City Council,

I am submitting my written comments regarding agenda item number 6 ("Eureka Rental Housing Program") as I am uncertain as to whether or not I will be able to attend Tuesday's meeting in person.

I have 3 comments.

The next draft of Councilman Glass's proposed rental inspection ordinance is expected to be on the agenda for the August 4 Eureka City Council meeting. It is rumored that if no significant objections are raised on August 4, the ordinance (or a slightly modified version thereof) will be on the agenda for actual approval on August 18.

Thankfully, the blatantly unconstitutional sections of the April 21 version of the ordinance have been removed.

At present, the primary reasons I think some people may oppose the ordinance are:

• The unspecified and adjustable annual per-rental-unit fee all landlords (and therefore all tenants) will be required to pay. (This fee could be seen as unfair - why should good landlords and tenants have to bear the bulk of the cost for enforcement actions?)
  
  
• Concerns about equal protection under the law. (Some may think that inspection programs that target renters, even if only by allocating funds to an inspection program, violate the principle of equal protection under the law.)
  
  
• Possible unfairness to landlords. (Read the ordinance and decide for yourself. Nothing is glaringly unfair, in my opinion.)

I am undecided as to whether or not (or to what extent) I will oppose the current draft. As I said above, the blatantly unconstitutional sections have been removed.

You may download the July 8 draft of the ordinance (.doc, 93KB), if you like.

Legal counsel for the Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC), acting through Robert Vaughn, County Chairman, has sent a "cease and desist" letter, date July 16th, to Ms. Barnett. Ms. Barnett has previously claimed on numerous occasions that she is Chairman of RPLAC following the illegitimate May 14th coup d'etat.

Quoting from the letter: "The County Committee appreciates your support of the Republican Party; however you should take no further action or make any further statements which indicate in any manner that you are the County Chairman for Los Angeles County. Very simply, your purported election has no validity and there is no legitimate basis for you to be acting in any official capacity on the County Committee."

Download the two page letter as a 25KB PDF.

RPLAC Chairman Robert Vaughn recently sent the following email. (RPLAC is the Republican Party of Los Angeles County.)

[Begin email.]

Dear Fellow RPLAC Members,

Recently, an email was sent to all RPLAC members, as well as a much broader CRP mailing list, and it included a statement by CRP Chairman Ron Nehring explaining his notification of a "competing claim" with the chairmanship of our RPLAC, and the action taken by the CRP to resolve such claim. I write this letter to you in order to resolve any confusion regarding the sovereignty of our Republican Party of Los Angeles County Central Committee (RPLAC) and that of the California Republican Party (CRP).

Let me assure everyone, that as members of the RPLAC, we are duly elected Republican Central Committee members representing the Republican voters of Los Angeles County operating independently from the CRP, and under no circumstances can we be directed in any way by the (state party) CRP, except with regards to party campaigns for partisan offices. All parameters which specify the power the CRP (state party) has over the County Central Committees are addressed in the state of California Elections Code Division 7, Part 3, Chapter 3, Code #7354 and in the CRP bylaws pages 1-2, sections 1.03 and 1.04. Case in point; while the State Committee originally determined to support proposition 1A in the recent election, many County Central Committees throughout CA voted against supporting prop. 1A. Our Central Committee voted against support for 1A-1F.

Overview

A faction of the membership of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC) has plotted and executed a coup in an attempt to oust the legitimate RPLAC officers and install replacement officers via illegitimate elections.

The coup was executed at the May 14, 2009 RPLAC meeting. Following the coup, RPLAC executive board member Anthony Cinelli hired Certified Professional Parliamentarian Nancy Sylvester to determine who is now the rightful Chairman of RPLAC. Ms. Sylvester's professional opinion states that "... Robert Vaughn became Chairman. Robert Vaughn remains Chairman today."

Since Certified Parliamentarian Sylvester issued that opinion on June 10, 2009, Republicans loyal to the rule of law have been standing up to recognize Robert Vaughn as the rightful Chairman of RPLAC. On Friday June 26 at 7pm, Chairman Vaughn held an RPLAC executive committee meeting, at which a quorum was established and business was conducted.

If the coup-plotting faction had been a majority of the RPLAC membership, they could have simply amended the RPLAC bylaws to call for a special election. Instead, the faction plotted and executed a coup that violated both Robert's Rules of Order and the RPLAC bylaws. As of July 2, 2009, the illegitimately elected officers still believe that the coup was legitimate and successful.

(This chronology was compiled by M. Parke Bostrom, parke.bostrom@gmail.com.)
(A PDF version of the chronology is available [337 KB]).

This evening I spoke before the Eureka City council. I first spoke about Councilman Glass's repeated decisions to exclude me from the proceedings of the city's Ad Hoc Housing Task Force. Councilman Glass responded that the task force is an "ad hoc" task force, so it is legal for it to meet in secret. However, legality is not the issue here: public access to the public process is the issue. Secondly, I spoke about the whether or not the city council should place a charter amendment on the ballot to switch the City of Eureka to a "true ward" system. The council eventually voted 3-2 against placing the amendment on the ballot. My comments follow.

Eureka City Councilman Glass continues to exclude me from the democratic process.

On June 9th I emailed the entire city council, asking when the next meeting of the "Ad Hoc Housing Task Force" would be. I received no response.

At today's ACLU meeting, I learned that there is a new draft of the ordinance. I have a paper copy of the draft, but not an electronic copy. I have not had time to review it.

Attendees at the ACLU meeting who did have time to review the draft (as they received it prior to when I did), seem to have concerns similar to those raised by the first draft.

Additionally, I have learned that there is going to be a secret meeting to discuss the new draft at 5pm tomorrow (Wednesday June 17th) at Eureka City Hall, Room 207 or 205. I say this meeting is secret because Councilman Glass chose not to tell me about it when I contacted the city council last week. Given the fact that I have not been invited to attend the meeting, and that I only learned about the meeting on short notice, I am not sure whether or not I will be able to crash and/or attend the secret meeting.

UPDATE: I have received an electronic copy of the current draft of the ordinance. Click here to download it. (91KB, MS Word document)

Kevin Collins has responded to the Four Ballot Privacy Concerns that I raised previously. Kevin humbly describes himself as "volunteer, humboldt county election transparency project", but I prefer to think of him as the inventor of the idea of the Election Transparency Project. I believe it was Kevin who originally conceived of publishing digital images of every voted ballot. Eventually, other volunteers such as myself (and far more significantly Mitch Trachtenberg) assisted Kevin and Registrar Carolyn Crnich with the technical implementation of the idea.

I apologize to Kevin for taking so long to respond to his comments. On Tuesday, Kevin jokingly said that by delaying in writing a response I was "controlling the flow of information", a charge I have occasionally levelled at Registrar Crnich. However, for me to present Kevin's comments here without my own response might create the impression that I considered Kevin to have successfully laid my concerns to rest.

First, Kevin's comments in exactly the format he provided them.

The Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

On Tuesday April 21, 2009, the City Council of Eureka California will consider passing an ordinance that is a clear violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Additionally, the ordinance will make all renters second-class citizens, as renters' homes - and only renters' homes - will be subject to inspection "at the earliest practicable date" on "48 hours advance written notice". But don't worry, if you happen to be out of town when your home is entered and inspected without your knowledge or consent, the city will notify you afterwards, possibly by just "leaving it [a notice] in the unit". It will be just like having your suitcase searched at the airport and finding the TSA notice afterwards.

At the California Secretary of State's public hearing regarding the possible decertification of GEMS 1.18.19 related to the Deck Zero covert deletion of 197 ballots in the November election, the audit log's magical "clear" button, and the GEMS's audit logs failing to show when ballots were manually deleted by the operator, Diebold/Premier representatives tried to shift blame for the 197 deleted ballots onto Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich.

Crnich responded, "If you're saying that your system needs to be checked every damn time we turn it on, I agree with you."

Crnich's use of an expletive seems to have pushed Diebold/Premier's legal counsel over the edge, causing them to reach for and firmly press the "nuke" button.

Early this morning, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisor's approved Registrar Crnich's voting modernization plan, phase II. I had hoped to speak before the board, but the item was moved from dead last on the agenda to dead first. I therefore arrived minutes after the item had been approved. Below are the comments I had prepared.

Four Ballot Privacy Concerns
Related to the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project
by M. Parke Bostrom, 2009.03.22, http://parke.dreamhosters.com/s9y/a/2

Overview

This article introduces and discusses four ballot privacy concerns related to the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project. The article does not attempt to establish the significance of any of these concerns; it merely recognizes their existence.

Dear Editor,

Your January 11th article ( "Elections staff looks to dump equipment") contains misleading quotes by David Cobb.

Quote: "The switch from one system to another is really mandated by the federal government's Help America Vote Act."

Fact: The purchase in 2006 of accessible voting equipment was required. The currently planned purchase of replacement equipment is not required, nor is there a mandated deadline for implementation.

Quote: "A couple of people who were on the committee who basically failed to show up at these meetings are now crying foul two years later when these things are going to be implemented... this doesn't sound like a bad process, it sounds like a couple people who failed to take advantage of their seat at the table are now crying foul."

Fact: The "Humboldt Election Advisory Committee" has no charter, no rules, no by-laws, no fixed membership, reports to no one, does not know what constitutes a quorum, does not publish minutes, and does not keep written records of its proceedings. Crying foul when there are no rules is obviously a logical impossibility.

Fact: A month before implementation of the currently proposed plan, Registrar Carolyn Crnich asked several "committee" members to keep the plan secret, presumably from other "committee" members.

It is clear to me that the "Humboldt Election Advisory Committee" in its current form fails to deliver the transparency and integrity we expect in our elections.

Sincerely,

M. Parke Bostrom