Liberal San Diego litigator Cory Briggs
In his May 16 letter to the City of Anaheim, Greg Diamond of Brea – the “government accountability attorney” who represents his buddies from CATER – explains the secretive group’s lawsuit against the Anaheim Convention Center expansion “largely follows the reasoning sent to the City Council prior to its vote by Cory Briggs, Counsel for our Co-Plaintiff…”
That’s helpful because CATER, self-proclaimed champions of transparency that they are, haven’t released their lawsuit to the public for whom they claim to be fighting. So if the public wants to have some inkling of the grounds on which CATER is driving up the cost of a Convention Center expansion they profess to support, they’ll have find their way to Diamond’s May 15 post on Orange Juice Blog. That’s a tall order since very few Anaheim residents have ever heard of Orange Juice Blog (lucky devils). Transparency in action – CATER-style!
In the sentence quoted above, Diamond pontificates about Brigg’s communication to the City Council, which he says “the City Council chose to ignore in approving the bonds without a legally mandated vote of the electorate.”
Diamond is talking about an e-mail Briggs sent to the Anaheim City Council. And when did councilmembers receive this warning they “chose to ignore”? At 3:06 p.m. on March 11 – a few minutes after the council convened for its workshop on the Convention Center expansion, prior to going straight into regular session.
Soooo…why did Briggs wait until after the council started its meeting to sound the alarm? Surely, it would have had more impact had it been sent even just the day before? It’s not as if the Convention Center expansion landed on the council agenda out of nowhere. For people like Briggs, litigation is simply politics by another means.
I am not agreeing with the claims made in Brigg’s e-mail or CATER’s lawsuit. But one has to wonder if Briggs had any sincere desire to get the council to pause before voting, or whether he was merely creating an “I told you so” alibi in anticipation of a lawsuit. Perhaps Briggs could give a little with the old transparency and tell us why he waited until it was basically too late to e-mail the Anaheim City Council?
While exploring the subject of “too little time”, perhaps we could also wonder why the City held the “Workshop” and the Council Meeting for the FINAL VOTE, ON THE SAME DAY, HOURS APART? Besides allowing Counsel Biggs your ‘respectable interval’ for prior notice, do you think that more separation might have offered MORE THAN 3 PEOPLE commenting from the general public, (of a City of nearly 345K) an opportunity to learn about what their City was intending for a 30- year, nearly $300 Million Commitment of their TAX dollars? The other 25 (and most of the audience) seemed know or care less about little else beyond that their wallets getting directly or indirectly FILLED by the deal!
What’s the difference between Cory Briggs and a Catfish?
One’s a scum sucking bottom dweller and the other’s a fish.
He’s the equivalent of an ambulance chaser for public agencies. Taxpayers statewide can thank him for raising the cost of their infrastructure and doing more to stop jobs than a recession. He’s right up Tait’s alley.
My view how to help Democratics in Anaheim. First make Anaheim more hipster. It has entertainment, one of the lowest crime rates for cities its size it has a crime rate much lower than Houston Tx or Dallas Tx since Republicans love Texas. It does have gangs but few cities over 300,000 these days do not.Also, the building of a transportation hub is a good idea, Hipsters like more public transportation. The hipster crowd will lead to some gentrification. Low income immigrant Hispanics will have to moved more into the inland empire and drive their car or ride the train or express bus into Anaheim for resort work and some construction work.After enough gentrification some of the immigrant Hispanics could get some low income housing but the gentrification needs to come first. Actually this was Republican Carl Pringle idea to gentrify Anaheim and he didn’t get to see it happen that much.