Anaheim Insider here.
It’s helpful to remember that at this evening’s council meeting, Mayor Tom Tait will try to resurrect “Take Back Anaheim”: a failed 2012 initiative that was crafted by Anaheim liberals and funded by the union representing Anaheim city government employees. The Mayor has re-named it (but you can see the “new” name on the banner above), but it is still the Lorri Galloway-OCEA initiative.
Then-Councilmember Galloway and other liberal city activists like Joanne Abu Qartoumy and John Leos launched “Take Back Anaheim” in the wake of the City Council’s approval of the city’s TOT-rebate agreement to support the GardenWalk Hotels project. The Orange County Employees Association (which represents most Anaheim city employees) paid tens of thousands of dollars for the signature gathering, hiring Tim Whitacre (later campaign manager for the Tait-Vanderbilt campaign) to run the effort. Mayor Tait very publicly endorsed the Take Back Anaheim campaign, which included a series of OCEA-funded direct mail pieces attacking attacking Councilmembers Harry Sidhu, Gail Eastman and Kris Murray as “The Giveaway Three” for their pro-GardenWalk votes.
This is useful history to remember, because it contradicts the prevailing narrative of Tait-as-victim-of-Council-Majority. This is the origin of the bitter rift that has overshadowed Anaheim City Council dynamics ever since. It’s a rift that was opened by the Mayor’s support of a campaign that unfairly vilified his council colleagues over a single vote; it might have been healed then by mayoral leadership based on the much talked about kindness campaign. Anaheim politics would have taken a different, more positive direction. Instead, it was a smiling embrace of a dishonest campaign to smear colleagues who would still have worked with him on other issues. Three years later, the Mayor is trying to resurrect the same initiative, just under a different name.
UPDATE: The City Council voted this amendment down 3-2. Murray, Kring and Brandman voted “No” while Vanderbilt sided with Tait.
Earlier, while arguing against Murray’s Anaheim Taxpayer Protection Act, Tait said it shouldn’t be put on the ballot because the current “at-large council” shouldn’t tie the hands of future “district councils.” It seems not to have occurred to the Mayor that his charter amendments would do exactly what he said the council shouldn’t do: tie the hands of future councils. Amazing.
If Tom Tait thinks the voters are qualified to pass judgment on complicated issues like bond financing and economic assistance agreements, then he must think they’re qualified to give the thumbs up or down on whether he gets to increase his council assistant’s budget from $60,000 to $100,000.
A councilmember ought to make a motion to put the pay hike Tait wants for Mishal Montgomery on the ballot. Surely the voters will see that THE MAYOR must be given what he demands!
I’m watching Tait introduce his “Let The People Vote” amendment, and amazed how he twists, shades and slices and dices the truth…when he is not talking out of his behind. Shameful.