You Wouldn’t Want Anyone Critical on an “Oversight” Committee

Theresa Harrington from the Contra Costa Times re­cently wrote a story, West Contra Costa school board blocked well-​known tax­payer rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Bond Oversight Committee, on the usu­ally silent process of keeping a com­pliant school dis­trict bond over­sight com­mittee in place. (I’ve been a member of this com­mittee since January 2011.) In this case it was not so silent. Although the story is much bigger than that meeting, for now let’s walk through her story of the Feb. 1 meeting of the West Contra Costa County School Board. (I’ve posted the salient video clips on YouTube.)

Ramsey, who had been watching the pro­ceed­ings on tele­vi­sion, asked the board to re­con­sider the mo­tion to deny a seat to Jungherr, which had died with a tie vote while he was at home.

Which is ex­actly the point. While Mr. Ramsey was at home, the mo­tion to refuse to ac­cept the nom­i­na­tion failed, and the matter was di­rected to be taken up at the next meeting. All Ramsey had to do was wait till the next meeting, but that would have sug­gested he was a mere mortal.

In his re­port to the board, Superintendent Bruce Harter had rec­om­mended that Jungherr’s nom­i­na­tion be de­nied based on ac­tions when he had pre­vi­ously served on the com­mittee. Harter said Jungherr showed a lack of in­tegrity by writing a letter to the county su­per­in­ten­dent on let­ter­head that Jungherr cre­ated himself.

This was coaxed out of him during the meeting, but in the meeting ma­te­rials no reason was given beyond:

“Mr. Jungherr has pre­vi­ously served on the CBOC from 2004 to 2006 and again from 2009 to 2011. Based on those years of ex­pe­ri­ence, staff and the com­mittee lead­er­ship agree that re-​appointing Mr. Jungherr will im­pede rather than en­hance the work of the com­mittee in meeting its statu­tory obligations.”

By not spec­i­fying the claims against Mr. Jungherr be­fore­hand, it de­nied him and the people who sup­port him a rea­son­able op­por­tu­nity to re­spond to the claims made against him. The will­ing­ness of Harter to put someone on trial without any real state­ment of the claims against shows a lack of pro­fes­sional in­tegrity on his part.

As for the spe­cific item coaxed from Dr. Harter, it’s common for in­di­vidual mem­bers of bodies to use sta­tionery in making state­ments. It’s also com­pletely within the rights of a body to reg­u­late how it’s sta­tionery is used. The CBOC, in all this time, has never de­vel­oped sta­tionery or any rules gov­erning stationery.

As al­ways, in cases like this, the ob­jec­tions to a member’s use of sta­tionery have nothing to do with ab­stract no­tions of proper sta­tionery use, but every­thing to do with what’s on the sta­tionery. In this case, Anton Jungherr pointed out that Bruce Harter had made some sort of error in sub­mit­ting a bond mea­sure. The error turned out to be sur­mount­able, but the af­front to Harter re­mained and the “smoking gun” for Ramsey’s lieu­tenants to trot out when­ever they feel in the mood.

The trustees were torn over Jungherr’s nom­i­na­tion. In Ramsey’s ab­sence, Madeline Kronenberg and Tony Thurmond voted to block Jungherr from the com­mittee, while Antonio Medrano and Elaine Merriweather voted against that motion.

“I think he’s been a dis­rup­tion to the process,” Kronenberg said.

The word “dis­rup­tion” evokes im­ages of slam­ming one’s fist on the desk like this. Yelling. Physically ob­structing the com­mittee. None of this happened.

Mr. Jungherr is cer­tainly not one to be cowed by bul­lying, but ul­ti­mately he’s just one quiet, but per­sis­tent, old guy. Parliamentary pro­ce­dure over hun­dreds of years has de­vel­oped tech­niques for al­lowing the bal­ancing of in­di­vidual opinion and group ef­fec­tive­ness. You just have to use it. Any item can be time-​limited and any member can make a mo­tion to end de­bate and move for­ward at any­time. The problem is with the com­mittee leadership’s lack of in­terest in par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dure. Mr. Jungherr’s crime was to “dis­rupt” by being different.

Thurmond ex­pressed con­cerns about Jungherr’s pre­vious res­ig­na­tions from the com­mittee, but Medrano said it was im­por­tant to allow dis­si­dent voices.

Jungherr was the Hercules nom­inee orig­i­nally. He re­signed in frus­tra­tion at the committee’s lack of ac­tion. He then came back on the com­mittee as a nom­inee of Audrey Miles. The School Board dis­cussed his pre­vious res­ig­na­tion (ac­cording to Charles Ramsey during the meeting) and ap­proved him.

The other “res­ig­na­tion” was Jungherr changing his status as a Miles nom­inee to being the se­nior cit­i­zens’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the com­mittee at the be­hest of Superintendent Harter. Read the agenda item. As a fur­ther sign of Harter’s lack of pro­fes­sional in­tegrity in this matter, he re­fused to clarify this at all.

Merriweather didn’t state an opinion be­fore the vote but said af­ter­ward that she wanted to hear what Ramsey thought.

“I would like to hear his opinion so I know that I’m voting the right way,” she said.

Her wish came true when Ramsey sur­prised everyone by showing up and telling trustees he wanted to re­spond to Merriweather’s com­ment. By that time, all the mem­bers of the public who had come to ad­dress the issue had left, in­cluding Jungherr.

Charles Ramsey is the bond con­struc­tion pro­gram. The idea of re­lying on him for ad­vice on who should be on the com­mittee to oversee what is ba­si­cally him is bizarre. But, this is just one ex­ample of the zombie-​like re­la­tion­ship of the rest of the school board to Ramsey over the last couple of years. In this meeting, my fa­vorite pa­thetic zombie mo­ment was when Tony Thurmond began cooing over Ramsey like a star-​struck school girl about his “pho­to­graphic memory” in im­per­fectly re­calling the speakers during the ear­lier trial of Anton Jungherr.

Kris Hunt, ex­ec­u­tive di­rector of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, which put in Jungherr’s name for nom­i­na­tion, said the board’s ac­tion vi­o­lated the spirit of the Brown Act. The pre­vious rep­re­sen­ta­tive re­signed be­cause she was frus­trated by in­ac­cu­rate min­utes and a hos­tile en­vi­ron­ment, she added.

“Hostile en­vi­ron­ment” sums it up per­fectly. The con­stant bul­lying and mil­i­tant lack of in­terest of some of the other com­mittee mem­bers has truly amazed me in my year and a quarter on the com­mittee. I truly feel sorry for not ap­pre­ci­ating the pain and sorrow of the pre­vious taxpayer’s as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the committee.

One nice thing about the ar­ticle is that it left the last word to the Great Satan him­self, Anton Jungherr

But Jungherr said Tuesday that he’s not going away. He has pushed for ac­cu­rate records and com­pli­ance with the law.

He de­fended the let­ter­head he cre­ated, saying it iden­ti­fied him as a bond over­sight com­mittee member while the con­tent of the letter stated he was acting on his own.

“They went to ex­tra­or­di­nary ef­forts to keep me off the com­mittee,” he said. “If you think dis­rup­tive is asking to have the min­utes cor­rect and saying don’t have (former) dis­trict em­ployees on the com­mittee, I guess I’d plead guilty.”