Anaheim Insider here.
One of Mayor Tom Tait’s favorite targets is “crony capitalism,” which he distorts as any form of governmental economic assistance to businesses. A few months ago, he stood before the Republican party of Orange County and told them it was “a cancer on our party” and accused his council colleagues of promoting it.
The Mayor’s outrage over this cancer is selective, and confined only to Republicans on the Anaheim City Council. When the Republican-dominated city council of neighboring Orange recently unanimously approves a generous sales tax sharing agreement with SC Fuels, the Mayor doesn’t sound the alarm that this “cancer” is spreading further on the party. In fact, he recently accepted a $1,400 donation from the president of SC Fuels to his mayoral campaign. Will his campaign return the tainted contribution from this “crony capitalist”?
This shouldn’t be surprising. The Garden Grove City Council gives free land and far more generous TOT rebates to hoteliers and amusement park developers than Anaheim has ever considered, in order to lure the development of Resort area luxury hotels out of Anaheim and into their city. Nothing from the Mayor about the cancer spreading to the Republican members of the Garden Grove City Council; his firm even does work for a politically-connected developer benefiting from the subsidies.
Mayor Tait’s opposition to these kinds of agreements doesn’t mean he should return the donation from SC Fuels’ president, who would have secured the same (if not better) deal from another city if Orange hadn’t acted. The Republicans on the Orange City Council acted wisely to keep their biggest sales tax generator in town. Nor should it mean Tait & Associates shouldn’t do work for the developer of the Great Wolf Resort in Garden Grove. The Garden Grove City Council acted in the best interests of the city, and the Mayor acted in the best interests of his company and employees.
But Mayor Tait shouldn’t demagogue these policies as “crony capitalism” and selectively attack his colleagues for supporting modest versions of these economic assistance programs as economic development tools while, at the same time, his company is benefiting from them and his campaign is soliciting donations from beneficiaries of what he calls “giveaways.” If he’s going to demagogue the issue, he shouldn’t position himself to benefit from it. If the Mayor really believes this is a party-wide “cancer,” he should call out elected officials party-wide and not just his Republican council colleagues whom he’s trying to unseat.
Why on earth aren’t there people at the Anaheim council meetings pointing these things out at public comment? Tait has no trouble bringing in his team of prevaricaters (or is it prevariCATERS?) to falsely accuse the rest of the council of all manner of mis-deeds. Let’s hear it from the sane of the city and take back the council meetings’ open comment period from the liars and loons!
Tait is a world class hypocrite! Thank you for providing the proof of his hypocrisy. Someone should also point out that he’s working overtime to attack the women on his council. Something he did when Shirley McCracken also dared to take positions contrary to his in the 90s. He never pulled this crap with the men he served with regardless of party. Hope to God he is ousted by Lucille Kring or Lori Galloway in Nov. We need peace restored in Anaheim.
Well said, all! I am sick and tired of Tait holding himself out to be the “nice or kind” guy. He is a walking hypocrite and completely destructive. Let’s hope everyone get behind someone else.