On Monday my post said that Gorelick is being dishonest about his role in his incorrect ballot designation and that lying to cover up ones own actions is unbecoming of a elected official and causes the public to lose trust in anything that person says. (and I’ll add defensively, I don’t believe that it is a personal attack to call into question the public actions of a public official, especially when those actions are dishonest).

So Gorelick asked that I post the “official candidate declaration” which is here:

I’ve cropped the important part for easier reading here:

The declaration page clearly shows that someone, likely the County Registrar, has crossed out “Intern” from the ballot designation. Before the vote, Gorelick writes about the fact that when he took his forms to the Registrar’s office, there were concerns about the use of “Intern”:

The profession that would be listed on the ballot did cause some consternation on the part of the county staff when neither “intern pharmacist” or “student pharmacist” fit into the regulatory framework used to determine official titles. The concern was that the modifiers were titles which are not allowed. I left that day thinking that I would be listed as either “intern pharmacist” or “pharmacy intern”, but that changed sometime prior to the printing of the ballots.

So clearly, there was an awareness by Gorelick that his requested designation was problematic.

But here’s where Gorelick’s action diverge from his claims. And so that you don’t have to strain your eyes, I’ve zoomed in on the language in the oval directly under the requested designation:

So the Declaration of Candidacy states that a ballot designation is optional, but if requested, a completed worksheet is required. And that worksheet is here:

Again, here’s the important part of that worksheet:

State Election Code 13107 explains the rules for ballot designations (emphasis added):

No more than three words designating either the current principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate, or the principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate during the calendar year immediately preceding the filing of nomination documents.

Gorelick recently sent me a copy of the Secretary of State’s “Ballot Designation Regulations.” The document says the following:

The Ballot Designation Worksheet shall request that the candidate proposing the ballot designation provide the following information:…

(5) At the option of the candidate, the candidate may submit one or more proposed alternate ballot designations ranked in order of the candidate’s preference;

So Gorelick has the right to have a ballot designation, and must use the worksheet in order to provide the County with any “proposed alternate ballot designations ranked in order of the candidate’s preference.” The worksheet isn’t a throw away, it’s required, and it is used in order to inform the County on their actions.

So the Guidelines state that:

(1) If a candidate is licensed by the State of California to engage in a profession, vocation or occupation, the candidate is entitled to consider it one of his or her “principal” professions, vocations or occupations if (i) the candidate has maintained his or her license current as of the date he or she filed his or nomination documents by complying with all applicable requirements of the respective licensure, including the payment of all applicable license fees and (ii) the status of the candidate’s license is active at the time he or she filed his or her nomination documents.

As this entire issue has come up again, because Gorelick was not a Board Certified Pharmacist and is now possibly running into issues with his certification possibly related to his ballot declaration that he was a pharmacist, it’s clear that he had not “maintained [his] license current as of the date [he] filed.”

and then there’s this:

Proposed ballot designations submitted pursuant to Elections Code § 13107, subdivision (a)(3), shall be subject to the following provisions:…

(c) In order for a ballot designation submitted pursuant to Elections Code § 13107, subdivision (a)(3), to be deemed acceptable by the Secretary of State, it must accurately state the candidate’s principal professions, vocations or occupations, as those terms are defined in subdivisions (a) and (b) herein. Each proposed principal profession, vocation or occupation submitted by the candidate must be factually accurate, descriptive of the candidate’s principal profession, vocation or occupation, must be neither confusing nor misleading, and must be in full and complete compliance with Elections Code § 13107 and the regulations included in this Chapter.

In fact, the Guidelines have all sorts of sections on issues of when and how you can call yourself “retired,” incumbent, etc. How you cannot designate yourself as an official with a political party, because those offices are not truly elected and may mislead voters into thinking you are something you’re not. It’s extremely clear in the law, that Intern Pharmacist and Pharmacist are not at all the same thing and that one has to be extremely specific in filing a designation.

But what if Gorelick had walked away from filing, confident that he was going to be listed as an Intern Pharmacist as he write?. Yesterday I confirmed with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters (ACROV) that they send a proof of each candidate’s ballot listing to the candidate before the election in order to allow the candidate to identify spelling errors, and make sure that they don’t list a plumber as an electrician, etc. So Gorelick was not only aware that there were concerns with his filing designation (from his initial visit), and he not only turned in paperwork that explicitly told the County that they could designate him a “Pharmacist” but then, he received a confirmation proof of his ballot listing, which gave him the opportunity to correct his previous mistake. Clearly, this didn’t happen. Updated: Gorelick emailed me to say that he had received a proof copy, but that he had not opened it until after the deadline for corrections. Interestingly, his post today (link below) ignores this when talking about how the County never contacted him.

So in the end, all the paperwork, the statutes, guidelines and procedures point directly to Gorelick having listed himself as a Pharmacist on the ballot. Which brings us back to the point of Monday’s post.

The point on Monday was not that Gorelick called Leah Williams a liar, or that his comments section is messed up, or even that he clearly broke the rules in filing for last Fall’s election.

The point is that he is 100% not telling the truth when he writes:

I did know that the ballot designation listed next to my name, “pharmacist”, would likely be in my favor.  That designation was the result of a mistake by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, a change made after I filed which I had no input into;

And this lie is the basis for three posts, which have since been taken down but are linked to here, which lob a lot of accusations at other people, all of which are based on a lie.

Gorelick has a right to be angry and concerned about his certification, no one can take that away from him. But he doesn’t have the right to make up his own facts and then use them to attack other people.

Updated: Gorelick has a new post up today in which he continues to ignore the fact that it was he himself that listed “Pharmacist” on his paperwork as an acceptable ballot designation. Apparently, it’s all someone else’s fault and the only mistake he made was choosing Blogspot over WordPress software, causing his comments section to not work correctly. This post is possibly more troublesome than the original.

I asked Gorelick about this in the comment section of his blog, however it appears that the comment has been moderated, another sign of an attempt to hide the truth and cast aspersions on others for his own misdeeds.

This comment has raised the ire of Gorelick and a couple of his supporters who have asked for a retraction. It’s a day late, but here it is: my statment that I left a comment on Gorelick’s site is true, I spent about 45 minutes writing the comment, which was along the lines of my Monday post, and asked him to bridge the gap between the reality of his actions and his 180-degree different statement about them. That comment did not appear on the website.

As Denise Lai has pointed out in the comments, Blogger (the blog site that Gorelick uses) is less than perfect. I’ve had issues with it in the past, so I’ll concur with her assessment that Blogger “sucks.” That said, in the past, the problems I have experienced have resulted in error messages, an inability to login to comment, etc. None of which occurred on Sunday. Still, it’s certainly possible that there was some new error that saw the comment whisked into the ether, never to be seen again.

Up until last Saturday, I would have said “whoops, my bad” and immediately adjusted my posted with a clarification. But given that on Sunday, Gorelick was caught making false statements in order to distance himself from his own actions, I find myself in a bind of needing to trust the word of someone who has now shown himself not to be trustworthy. This is not an easy thing to write/think. Up until Sunday, I never thought of Gorelick as someone who would deny his own actions in order to support his own perception, but Sunday’s post changed that.

So, it’s clearly possible that the disappearing comment was a technical aberration. In fact, I’m slightly inclined to believe it was, despite everything else. So let this post stand as a correction to my statement.

That said, the original point of Monday’s post remains intact, comment moderation or no, and if anything, this issue highlights the trouble that Gorelick has created for himself.

Gorelick has also asked me to post some other documents related to his campaign filings, I will be attempting to get those up later today or tomorrow as well.  I didn’t want anyone to think I was ignoring the request.

On several occasions, verifiably untrue statements were made to me by CEO Stebbins Others are free to interpret this as unintentional, but I am of the opinion that there was more to it than that and would have to label those statements as lies.  (1/26/11)

And he has had an ongoing beef with the person he beat in last November’s election, Leah Williams, who cried foul when she lost over Gorelick’s designation a “Pharmacist,” a state licensed position, when he was still a student and intern. The issue never took hold, most people realized that the time for discussing the issue was prior to the election, not afterwards.

The bizarrely out of the blue Sunday night, Gorelick had a new post insinuating that Williams is a “liar” and her actions “evil” and hinting that he may sue for defamation. All of it was unnecessary and odd, but what came next took the issue to a new level. Gorelick started rewriting history and in the process making statements that absolutely untrue. From the post:

I did know that the ballot designation listed next to my name, “pharmacist”, would likely be in my favor.  That designation was the result of a mistake by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, a change made after I filed which I had no input into; it should have been “intern pharmacist” which is the license I currently hold (and what I listed on my filing papers) and how I represented myself throughout the campaign.

But here’s the thing, the “pharmacist” designation wasn’t the result of a mistake by the County, it was specifically one of the options that Gorelick provided the County (and signed a sworn statement to the truthfulness of) in case “intern pharmacist” couldn’t be used for some reason. He listed “Pharmacist” ahead of “Student” which was a true designation. Here’s his ballot form:

Today, he’s back to trying to create this myth writing in a third post on the subject (they all say basically the same thing):

The fact is that I did, even as a student (let’s ignore the fact that I was a licensed intern pharmacist and never suggested otherwise) have more knowledge of health care than Leah Williams as a “Business Owner/Attorney”

Actually, lets ignore the fact that Elliott specifically told the county that he could be represented as a “Pharmacist” and the fact that their choosing to do so was not a mistake, but a result of his actions.

Gorelick admitted as much in an article that he would both benefit from the designation “pharmacist” in writing for the UCSF student paper where he worked:

 Of course, I’m not really a licensed pharmacist yet, but that is how the Alameda County Registrar of voters listed my profession on the ballot.

The problem isn’t so much that Gorelick fudged the truth in his filing (granted he claimed to be something that requires certification and licensing that he didn’t have, imagine if he claimed to be a Doctor, Lawyer or Pilot and wasn’t, somehow claiming to be a “Pharmacist” doesn’t set off the alarms that it probably should). The problem is having stepped in it, Gorelick is now on the attack blaming County staff for trusting his own campaign filings, blaming Williams for raising the issue, blaming a host of Alameda politicians for not standing up and supporting him (because Gorelick appears to believe that he’s not culpable here).

We elect people to be the voice of the community. The Hospital Board oversees million dollar budgets and we need to be able to trust that the people who are overseeing this process are able to rationally, and reasonably, make decisions with our money. Flat out attacking people publicly, especially calling them liars, etc. when ones arguments are based on falsehoods, is cause for significant concern.

I hadn’t intended to write about this issue. I asked Gorelick about this in the comment section of his blog, however it appears that the comment has been moderated, another sign of an attempt to hide the truth and cast aspersions on others for his own misdeeds.

At this point, Gorelick should be considering his role on the Board and whether he feels it’s appropriate for him to continue. It’s questionable whether his comments on the finances, etc. of the hospital, all based on his pre-conceived notion that the hospital be shuttered, aren’t convenient statements that misuse other facts to support his position.

Updated post: revised image to remove address info

Reading through Alameda Power and Telecom’s, now Alameda Municipal Power (AMP), Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), I came across a couple of interesting fun facts regarding Alameda’s employers/energy users. Did you realize that Alameda’s top 10 employers account for nearly 20% of Alameda’s employment?

And furthermore, 5 out of the 10 employers are public agencies (or in the case of Alameda Hospital publicly supported) accounting for 12 ¼ of all employment in Alameda. (Coast Guard, AUSD, Alameda Hospital, City Of Alameda, College of Alameda).

I was a little surprised to see Safeway and Bay Ship & Yacht Company (they tenants of AGL run by John Beery of the John Beery vs. Measure H lawsuit) in the top 10.

The other equally interesting graph is the Top 10 AMP Customers:

This one is pretty important to understand. The Top 10 Customers use nearly 21% of AMP’s power and the Top 2 (hello MARAD and Coast Guard) use nearly 10%.

[post edited to accurately reflect the relationship between Bay Ship and Yacht and John Beery]

I’m unclear if the packets started being attached back in June and that I just missed them because it never occurred to me to wait 2-3 days after the meeting to see if they had been posted, or if someone is being really kind and going back and updating them.

The packet and agenda info can be found here.

There’s a week left in the filing, and one has to wonder, after last year’s end of the year vacancy fiasco, what the district has done this time around to get the word out? I have seen only one mention of it (in yesterday’s Alameda Sun). Perhaps So-Called Neal J. can let us know if he received a notice, as one of the past applicants. I accidentally stumbled upon it as I was trying to figure out how the district puts out its agendas and meeting packets.

{Quick aside: Could someone take it upon themselves to teach our public agencies,  organizations, and departments how to use email lists and RSS feeds to get information out to people who want it? Seriously, in this day and age, the idea of posting something on a static website and hoping that someone will remember to look at it is very anti-proactive in the public noticing department. And in most cases, the amount of work is negligible.}

Anyway, if you’re interested in sitting on the Hospital Board (only three applied last time around, you have about a week to apply. From the Hospital’s site:

Individuals interested in being considered for this appointment must submit an “Application package”, as described below, to the District. Application Packages must be delivered to the istrict, at the address below, no later than 5:00 p.m., on Monday, January 14, 2008.

An applicant to fill the vacancy must meet the following minimum requirements: (1) be a resident and registered voter in the District, (2) not have been suspended or expelled from participation in the Medicare program, and (3) not have been convicted of a felony.

….The District will conduct an Applicant Conference on January 30, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. in the 2 East Board Room at Alameda Hospital, for the purpose of familiarizing Applicants with the District and Alameda Hospital.

Get out there and get you budget oversight fix! The application is in this packet.

One would wonder why those interested in the seat were so unmotivated as to not actively inquire into the seat and whether this style of non-inquiry reflects a unquestioning and unconcerned approach to fiscal matters, such as those consistently faced by the hospital. (Personally, I’d like to know that the people looking under the hood have the initiative to think on their feet enough that when a high profile vacancy occurred, like the one made by departing member Tam who was recently elected to the council, that candidates would proactively look into how to become a part of the process, not sit back waiting for someone to call and ask).

Despite comments made from some quarters (examples can be found here and here and especially here {Don’s repetition of TJ’s name is downright creepy}), the idea that the board should limit itself to non-elected individuals from previous elections is ludicrous. In the case of one of the soon-to-be applicants who was the top-nonelected candidate, voters have rejected him twice and in November 2006 he receive less than 33% of the vote than the #3 vote getter. Less than 20% of voters cast a ballot for him.

Losing an election is about the most ridiculous qualification for immediate appointment that one can come up with. What board could honestly override the voice of the electorate by actively selecting someone who was resoundingly rejected by the voters? Twice! While it may make sense to have automatic appointments go to the highest-unelected candidate in a race where only the first (and possibly second) candidate is elected. (Meaning the second or third place finisher is appointed to a vacancy on the board). In a top-three-are-elected race, choosing candidate #4 make not sense whatsoever. As was the case in 2006, the fourth place finisher is likely to have lost by a wide margin, with not even a hint of a plurality or significant vote of confidence.

Lost in this is unfortunately the hit that Rob Bonta, sole applicant and former Campaign manager for Lena Tam, is taking in all this. Innuendo and aspersions are hinted at and cast his way because of his connection to Tam, yet even the critics appear to agree that his CV is perfect for this spot. Rob Bonta is undeserving of these sour-grapes attempts at smearing his application and the Hospital Board will need to have a very good reason for selecting another candidate. To give in to the ridiculous rumor mill that has already started (and will surely continue) will most likely mean making a decision that the voters of Alameda have already said resoundingly “No” to.