On Local Government | Working hard for a non-job in Redondo Beach
The accusations are flying fast and furious. The tension is mounting.
Too bad the job that the candidates for the Redondo Beach City Treasurer’s office are fighting about is as meaningless as, oh, the Mayor’s, whose neutered role is only to bang a gavel and cut a ribbon or two.
The two candidates for this position, former Councilman Steve Diels and local businesswoman Dawn Esser, are both trying to position the other as being unsatisfactory for the position. Sorry, folks, but a lamppost is qualified for this position.
The City Treasurer’s office is an artifice created by the original City Charter as a part-time position, primarily to sign some papers and, then, go about the rest of their lives. In the 1960’s, it was made full time, for reasons unclear except that someone wanted a full time gig, the salary to go with it, and had the clout to make it happen.
Now, it is has become a six-figure office with full pension benefits, naturally, paid by the City. Following the 1990’s Orange County bankruptcy, the City Council placed strictures on the investments the office manages so that the only decision the Treasurer has to make is being very, very conservative and very, very, very conservative.
There, frankly, isn’t much to do. But, yet, we pay the occupant an exorbitant salary and forget they exist save for a once-a-quarter appearance before the City Council to say nothing really has changed.
So, the electoral fight goes on. Mr. Diels believes the office should return to part-time status. However, since that will require a vote of the people, it can’t happen for two years because Charter change votes can only occur at regular elections. The next one is in 2015. In the meantime, the higher salary would be in force, with all the accompanying benefits.
Ms. Esser, who claims financial experience, wants to keep the office full time, get the full salary and reduce the budget by eliminating other staff. This is a backward approach to getting to the real nub of the problem, which is that the office is way too costly for what it does. The cuts should come at the top, not among the people who are doing the actual work of the office.
Some of the accusations are stupefyingly fascinating to consider. Ms. Esser wonders whether Mr. Diels will give up his local business to be the Treasurer, since the Charter requires that this job be the only one they have. Mr. Diels believes that Ms. Esser’s support of the anti-AES ballot measures has cost the City hundreds of thousands of dollars, when it was the nincompoop City Attorney and sad sack City Council who decided to fight the measures in three levels of California courts only to lose, thus being required to pay the legal bills of the winning side.
The whole thing is nuts. Whomever you elect will be able to have an impact on the City of, count ‘em, ZERO. The office is useless and the faster the City gets rid of it the better.