Anaheim Insider here. A few days ago, a trove of documents was provided to your insider: e-mails and texts among a variety of City of Anaheim officials and political activists going back as far as early 2016. There are probably 1,000 or more in all, and it will take some time to sift through this thick pile. I will post ...

It was another long Anaheim City Council meeting, dragging on until past midnight – and even then the council was only able to move through a fraction of the discussion items on the agenda. The eyes of the Tait majority are bigger than its agenda stomach. At least on hour was consumed in wrangling over District 1 Councilwomen Denise Barnes request ...

Anaheim Insider here. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, rarely have so many work so hard to increase the pay of so few. Actually, just one person: Mishal Montgomery, Mayor Tait’s chief policy whisperer and hatchetman. $87,000. All in with benefits and such, the cost of taxpayers of the newly-created “Chief Policy Advisor to the Mayor”?: a whopping $158,000.  That is almost ...

Anaheim Insider here. Last week, Mayor Tom Tait tried and failed to convince his City Council colleagues to increase his council assistant budget from $60,000 to $100,000 a year. It was a long, contentious discussion. Tait’s council assistant, Mishal Montgomery, is the only council assistant who is vested in the CALPERS retirement system. Consequently, employing her under those circumstances is ...

Judging from the OC Register coverage and Facebook photos, the single-member council districts rally organized by the left-wing non-profits OCCORD and OCCCO, it was a case of the choir preaching to the rest of the choir. The Register pegged attendance, which seems a tad generous judging from photos posted by organizers, but OK. If the point of the rally was ...

Regarding Item 15 on last night’s city council agenda, to increase his personal aide’s budget, Mayor Tom Tait made some serious allegations. He accused the council majority of maliciously reducing his assistant’s budget and concluded his closing comments by actually saying his entire council was mean because they didn’t vote to give his assistant a 50 percent increase. The mayor’s ...

UPDATED – 7:55 pm, March 5 – Mayor Tait pulled the item, but it died for lack of a second. Tomorrow night, the Anaheim City Council will discuss whether to appropriate an additional $30,000 to continue paying the salary of Mayor Tom Tait’s part-time council assistant, Mishal Montogomery, through this June, the end of the fiscal year. Although it is ...