Joseph Turner's candidate debate performance
At the Clarion Hotel on Tuesday, the local Rotary Club held a candidate forum for incumbent City Clerk Rachel Clark and challenger Joseph Turner. The election will be Nov. 6. What happened there was extremely illuminating, particularly with respect to what Turner - dismissed by many in the city as a crackpot anti-illegal immigration activist - said and did.
Basically, Turner wowed many of the 45 or so present with his clear, forceful style. With the exception of one outburst of improper decorum - Turner cut through the moderator-centered format to harague Clark - the challenger articulated a platform of using the city clerk's office to crack down on unlicensed parolee and group home housing and swarm on unlicensed or non-taxpaying businesses.
Below is a picture from Tuesday's forum:
Conspicuously absent was any hint of the distasteful immigrant-baiting that has become his public hallmark. Turner even went to great lengths to emphasize his poor, broken-home background, painting himself as something of a Horatio Alger. A holder of a finance degree from capitalist-factory USC, Turner even said that 9/11 was a turning point for him, an event that turned him away from "materialistic" concerns and toward a life of public service.
Turner began with a quiet, subdued voice, a far cry from the shrill sloganeering he has used in the past.
If you bought his tale - and some in the crowd clearly did - it was a bravura performance.
Another pic, this one of Turner alone:
A brief synopsis of how it went:
Turner began his introduction by praising Clark for being "professional" and "very curteous" toward him.
He said he was running "because I sincerely believe that one person can make a difference." "I wanna fix this town," he said.
"We have thousands of unlicensed rental properties in the city of San Bernardino," he said, a statement which Clark herself corroborated in the podcast interview she delivered at the Sun. Turner said it costs the city "millions" in revenue.
Then, Turner slammed people "not invested in this community," particularly "absentee landlords." "These landlords simply do not take care of their properties," he said. "If they're not going to operate under the rules like any other business, we will shut you down," he said.
Turner then went into "group homes filled with sex predators." "I believe we should create a Megan's Law sort of quasi database for these group homes so that residents know where they're located."
Then, Turner moved to the sales tax in the city. He said he didn't support Measure Z, the voter approved quarter-percent increase, but that now that it was law it was an outrage that some businesses did not collect it for at least four months after it went into effect, a fact brought to light by the Sun last month.
"How do we know that they've been paying sales tax in the city of San Bernardino," Turner said, referring to Wal Mart and other businesses that stated they did not charge the increase because they have Highland mailing addresses, and therefore did not receive notice via mail. "Nobody to date has been able to give me a definitive answer," he said about whether such businesses have been paying sales tax to San Bernardino.
Then Turner said he would tell the crowd "a little bit about myself," adding that the media has painted a "one dimensional picture" of him.
"I come from a broken home ..." he said. "My parents devolved into a lifestyle of drugs ... my mother and my stepfather, who's Hispanic ... a lot of people think that I'm this raging racist ... my stepfather is Hispanic and I love him to death ..."
He continued: "I know what it's like to be homeless, because I was homeless ... I know what it's like to be poor, because I've been poor ... I know what it's like to go hungry, because I've gone hungry ... I know what it's like to be on welfare ... I know what it's like to have all my earthly possessions sold, pawned off, so my parents could buy drugs ... I'm a self-made man. I've had to scratch and claw for everything I have."
Turner then talked about going to USC, doing it "my way," he said, on "my own dime."
With his background sketched, Turner sought to show how his tough upbringing drives him now:
"Nothing is going to deter me from accomplishing the objectives I seek to accomplish."
And that was it, for his intro.
Later, the moderator addressed both Clark and Turner with questions. Turner said the city clerk's office is not "a policy making office per se."
Toward the end of the forum, Turner finally broke out of his button-down persona.
The topic was the sales tax non collection, which the Sun documented to be occurring at a Wal Mart and Circle K on Highland Avenue. Clark said sales tax receipts were "confidential," but that she could say that some businesses on the Colton border which were discovered to have not been paying sales tax to San Bernardino for years were now, definitively, paying tax properly.
While handing back the mic to the moderator, Turner broke in, without a mic: "I don't want to be rude," he said, voice rising, "but she did not answer the specific question. The question is is that Wal Mart on Highland Avenue paying sales tax to the city of San Bernardino."
Clark walked back toward the mic and answered "yes."
Clark, just before moving back to the podium:
"I would like to see the documentation on that," Turner said.
"Go shop at Wal Mart," Clark said, laughing, some in the crowd laughed also.
"No, no, no, no, hold on, see, you're mistaking my point, I'm not asking whether or not they're collecting 8 percent, I know they're collecting 8 percent now ... my question is is San Bernardino's Highland Avenue Wal Mart remitting sales taxes to the city of San Bernardino ... and nobody can answer that question ..."
"I have no reason to believe that they are not," Clark said. "I can tell you that routinely the city conducts audits and that in fact on yesterday's agenda there was a contract to the company that does the audits of our sales tax, so certainly at that point in time if in fact Wal Mart or any other business was not paying their respective use tax that that would be identified ... and the audit can go back three years ... and they would pay whatever was not remitted."
Turner, still without mic, said he wanted to respond, at which time Rotary Club president Tim Prince interjected and said candidates needed to address the moderator and not each other.
Turner got the mic back, said he found Clark's response "shocking."
In sum, this long dialogue was indicitive of a number of things:
1) Turner may have honed his message and his image, but he's still the aggressive, precocious man who makes elected officials and bureacrats shudder.
2) Turner can win over crowds in public speaking forums, assuming he doesn't melt down into unbridled outrage.
3) Turner would present a massively different city clerk than the staid and respected Clark, who has held down the post to almost total praise for 17 years, in that he would use his power to Hector businesses and rental owners with licensing mandates, inspections and fines.
4) Turner has a sizable support base among conservatives and modern populists in this city, a base only bolstered with the police union's surprising endorsement of him last month.
5) The sales tax noncollection and rental home nonlicensing issues will be Turner's bread and butter for the next month.
6) The sales tax issue, in particular, will continue to hurt Clark as long as she is unwilling or unable to give definitive answers as to why she didn't do more with the information about Wal Mart's noncollection (like calling Wal Mart) and how we can be sure businesses on murky boundaries are remitting sales tax proceeds to San Bernardino.
7) Turner has spent some time crafting his message, particularly the narrative about the broken-home boy making right and the turn from "materialistic" ambitions to public service after the 9/11 attacks. Sort of like a cross between John Edwards and Rudy Guliani, surely a comparison the right-wing blogging Turner would chafe at, but probably spot on nonetheless.
So there it is. Does, Turner have a shot? Most say no, but his entry into the race is drawing healthy scrutiny to an office that has long been off the voting public's radar.
Comments
It is time to start holding elected officials accountable...this city has been broken for many years (maybe due to severe political inbreeding) and it is time for the city to try something new.
Mr. Turner raises valid points that you have to wonder why they haven't been addressed in 17 years.
The city's crime is driven by low income multi housing complexes that are typically owned by absentee landlords. These people have no vested interest in the community, and are not held responsible for the problems that they allow to happen at their properties.
There is a current municipal code that mandates all rental properties have a business license. I would like to know how many of the "thousands" of rental properties in the city are actually paying the annual fee for a business license to the city.
In 17 years one would think that this number should be well over 3/4 of all rental properties, but I would not be surprised if less than 1/3 of these properties are properly licensed.
Civic responsibility must start with political accountability. Our political races have turned into popularity contests instead of selecting the best person for the job.
Make a decision based on the issues and not the emotions...
Posted by: Change is good... | October 3, 2007 6:16 AM
I want to respond to Paula Coleman's posting which was carried yesterday under "Crime Stats Tell Puzzling Tale." Unfortunately, it is not possible to post anything else under that article due to the advertisement placement.
Paula was a great Deputy City Attorney and we were sorry we were never able to get her to relocate here from Orange County. She went back to work there in 1999, after two years in our office.
Paula is correct that I did assign her to gang and prostitution injunctions.
However, this office based its first injunction against gang-related activity, but against a family,not against a specific gang, in the case of People v. Ortiz which was filed in 1995, two years before Paula joined us.
We extrapolated from the Street Terrorism Act, which was re-enacted in 1993, to bring that case which involved gang members shooting up a house across the street from San Bernardino High School. The large family, which seemed to function as a gang in that house, would shoot back at the gang members attacking their residence. The bullets were flying onto the campus at SBHS. The School District Police asked for our help and we successfully prosecuted that injunction which ended the problem.
We had to suspend our anti-gang injunctions when the case of People v. Acuna went up on appeal as a result of a gang injunction brought by the City of San Jose.
On January 30,1997, when the courts ruled in favor of the City of San Jose in the Acuna case, I immediately directed attorneys in our office to begin work with the police department to identify and gather evidence on San Bernardino gangs that we could target with injunctions.
When Ms. Coleman joined our office later in 1997, she was assigned the task of renewing our "nuisance abatement" actions against gangs.
Later, after reading of a successful application of nuisance abatement laws to prostitutes in San Diego, I directed Ms. Coleman to work up and file an injunction against prostitutes working on Baseline.
Ms. Coleman always expressed pleasure at the fact that our office was so proactive, unlike her previous experience in an appointed City Attorney's office in Orange County.
In fact,five months after leaving our office, Ms. Coleman, who had returned to work in an Orange County City Attorney's office, contacted me and expressed her disappointment at not being able to do there the proactive anti-gang, anti-prostitute legal actions that she had worked on here in San Bernardino.
Ms. Coleman, as a result of working on some of the anti-gang injunctions pioneered in this city by the City Attorney's Office, became an expert in such injunctions.
She did a great job and I credit her hard work as part of the reason we have been so successful in that area of municipal law.
It was great to see her entry on the Sun's blog.
Jim Penman
City Attorney
City of San Bernardino
Posted by: Jim Penman | October 3, 2007 8:42 AM
I agree with the proclamation of the anonymous writer (the first comment in this thread), that we should make informed decisions, not base them on emotion, and have added many links to official sites, (San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, FBI, SBPD, and etcetera), in other areas of SBNow Blog toward that end.
I also agree with Jim Penman (the second comment in this thread), when he states that he assigned the realization of the very welcome & successful gang and Baseline activity injunctions to city staff attorneys.
It is a refreshingly pleasant surprise to see Jim Penman giving credit where credit is due, to Paula in these instances. It has become increasingly common over the years to hear people pick one thing as the complaint about City Hall they wish to voice, "Jim Penman acts like he thinks he's *od and deserves credit for every plus in this city while always quick to blame others for the negatives". I hear this everywhere I go (in town, not out of town - this is mercifully off the bigger radar). It will be an even more pleasant surprise to welcome the end to this era in our city's history.
Thank you for the good, Jim, but the answers to "What have you done for San Bernardino lately?" are the reasons those who supported you in the past are no longer able to do so in good conscience.
Your Neighbor & Friend, But No Longer Your Supporter (For Quite Some Time Now, Unfortunately),
Susana Atanasova
Posted by: Susana Atanasova | October 3, 2007 11:46 AM
Mr. Penman it was really great to see your blog. I need to just clarify a couple of points that were made.
The Ortiz case was an injunction against a single house brought under the gang house abatement statute pursuant to Penal Code section 186.22a, if I remember correctly. The 7th Street gang injunction, the first one I did, covered an approximate area of 2 square miles with 67 named defendants, and at the time was believed to be the largest one ever sought. The City had never previously obtained injunctive relief against an entire gang as an unincorporated association and it's individual members.
On June 26, 1997, a SB police officer came to me specifically to ask for help with the 7th Street gang on the westside. I researched what was going on in Los Angeles with the anti-gang injunctions and on June 30, 1997, I wrote a memo to Mr. Penman asking for permission to proceed with San Bernardino's first civil gang injunction. I specifically stated "I would welcome the opportunity to prepare and file the necessary documents to seek a gang injunction on behalf of the City." I still have a copy of that memo wherein I requested permission to proceed with the project.
With the success of the first injunction a vice officer approached me regarding the possibility of an injunction against the prostitutes on Baseline.
Taking civil code nuisance statutes I drafted the complaint seeking terms similar to those imposed under the gang injunction. I am aware that San Diego had done red-light abatements pursuant to the Penal Code, however, I was not aware that San Diego had done what I did. Their programs targeted locations being used for prostitution. My action was seeking to enjoin the nuisance behavior of the individual girls and we served each of them individually to be bound by the terms of the injunction which included 13 enumerated prohibitions.
I also hadn't previously worked in a City Attorney's office prior to coming to San Bernardino as mentioned. I subsequently have worked in a City Attorney's office in Orange County which does in fact have an appointed City Attorney. Interestingly, he was a former City Attorney in a Los Angeles city that was succesful in obtaining the first gang injunction with the "no association" provision in the late 1980's. He is a huge supporter of injunctions. I believe the reluctance of many cities to do them is the enormous resource allocation required by the attorneys who draft them and the police personnel required to prepare the necessary information.
I express no opinion on the relative issues regarding an elected or appointed City Attorney. I have had absolutely great experiences under both. I have been allowed to pursue injunctions, albeit it took some time due to the resource allocation issue. In June 2006, I authored and teamed up with the Orange County District Attorneys office to obtain the first gang injunction in Orange County. It was a long time in the making due to the enormity of naming 155 individuals (including numerous juveniles who required special handling) and it involved a geographic area involving two cities. It has been hugely successful in reducing crime in the Safety Zone and in bringing relief to the citizens.
Just wanted to clarify and I send my best to all in San Bernardino!
Paula Coleman
Posted by: Paula Coleman | October 3, 2007 2:09 PM
In response to Paula Coleman's posting of 2:09 p.m. today I remember a memo on the 7th Street Gang and also that an officer approached Paula on the prostitution injunction.
What Paula apparently didn't know was that I had approached Police Chief Lee Dean right after the court upheld the Penal Code section on gang injunctions, before Paula came to work in our office, and asked him if his officers could work up some "targets" for gang injunctions. He said they would do so and he and I remained in communication on this issue until he informed me that the 7th Street gang was the first one they wanted to target.
I gave the Chief Paula's name as the contact person in our office. He told me he would have his "point man" contact her. That was done.
Regarding the prostitution injunction, I had attended a meeting of the Baseline Business Association at Las Palmas Restaurant on "E" Street just north of Baseline and heard numerous complaints about the prostitutes hurting business on Baseline. I believe then Lt. (later Captain) Jennifer Aragon was present although it might have been someone else from Vice and Narcotics. I think Lt. Aragon supervised that unit at that time. Having just read about the San Diego case, I told the merchants that I would assign an attorney to the project and see if we couldn't do something similar.
I then met with Police Chief Dean and told him what we wanted to do. I told him we would need the names of the active prostitues to list in the complaint.
He said he would have a vice offier contact me with that information. I told him to have the officer contact Deputy City Attorney Paula Coleman directly. I thought I had discussed both the Baseline Business Association meeting and my conversation with Chief Dean at that time.
In any event the contact was made and after much work on the part of the police officers they brought us the names.
However, Paula told me they didn't have the records of arrests and convictions. I again contacted Chief Dean who said he would take care of it. Subsequently, Paula told me she received the information she needed and was ready to finish the complaint.
When the complaint was finished, Paula gave it to me for my review. I made a few recommmendations for changes which she included.
Paula did her usual excellent job in prosecuting the case, in fact, both the 7th Street gang and the prostitution cases.
The gang members were so upset that they made threats against Paula.
The police quickly dealt with those issues and that injunction is still in effect.
Then, as now, police officers were supposed to get the permission of their supervisors before presenting "projects" to the City Attorney's office.
Might an officer have gone off on his/her own and presented a project to a Deputy City Attorney without clearing it up the chain of command? I'm sure that is possible.
However, the timing of of the San Jose case, our meetings with Chief Lee Dean, Paula's time of arrival in our office,the meeting of the Baseline Business Association,along with the San Diego prostitution case, suggest that more than mere coincidence was at work.
There is no doubt that the 7th Street Gang injunction was the first one in our County to name so many gang members and to cover several blocks of gang-claimed territory.
One of the most important things, in my opinion, is that Deputy City Attorney Paula Coleman was our "point person" on these cases and she set a high bar for those who came later to reach.
What is undeniable is that the San Bernardino City Attorney's Office pioneered these injunctions in our county, we were doing them in 1995 and we were doing other nuisance abatement actions (non-gang) as early as 1987-establishing a good record for using nuisance injunctions innovatively and effectively in the fight against organized crime in our City and County.
Jim Penman
City Attorney
City of San Bernardino
Posted by: Jim Penman | October 3, 2007 4:54 PM
Paula,
There's a special place in heaven for angels like you, fighting the good fight tooth & nail to afford our society some respite from the criminal elements.
It did seem as though Jim Penman's wording was implying he was the orchestrator of these huge local successes, but you've been kind enough to take time from your daunting life's work to clarify that with first-hand (backed up with the original memo even! YES!) accounting of the truth at City Hall as it refers to these issues.
Please, keep checking in on us ~ we need the help of folks like you!
Most sincerely,
Susana Atanasova
Posted by: Susana Atanasova | October 3, 2007 5:48 PM
This is getting to be pretty funny but if Mr. Penman wants the credit so be it. I know in great detail on how these projects came about, how they were initiated, what I initiated and what was accomplished.
I did not bring any of this up except to establish my connection with San Bernardino and to stand up for all the negative comments being said about Ms. Milligan. If someone were questioning my legal abilities, I would be incensed. As previously stated, I have know her for 17 years. We have been in court together numerous times and at many levels of the courts throughout the state. Her writing skills are exemplary and so are her analytical abilities. I have absolutely no stake in this election but if someone were putting out disparaging remarks about me I would hope my colleagues would stand up for me.
This isn't about me or my work, as I have said, I know all too well what I did in San Bernardino, and so do a lot of other people. This is about doing the right thing for someone who has always been a true professional in my opinion. My first blog was in response to Mr. Owens, not Mr. Penman. Mr. Owen's remarks were rude and unfair, ergo, I felt the need to respond. Ms. Milligan is an outstanding individual and whether she wins or loses, her reputation does not deserve to be tarnished.
I hope the City Attorney's Office will continue to look at innovative projects to benefit the citizens of San Bernardino no matter who is at the helm. There is a lot of good work that can be done!
I now need to turn my attention back to the citizens of the City I serve and work on new and exciting projects. I hope the citizens of San Bernardino will carefully consider my opinions and comments. Blogging off!
Paula Coleman
Posted by: Paula Coleman | October 3, 2007 6:57 PM
Paula Coleman for City Attorney???!!!
Posted by: Hopeful... | October 3, 2007 10:28 PM
Hopeful...,
If not Paula Coleman, than at least someone she finds highly suited to the office: MARIANNE MILLIGAN FOR SAN BERNARDINO CITY ATTORNEY ~ The only SANE choice, not the same OLD choice!
Besides, according to the time & date stamps on his comments above, Jim Penman seems to have added repeated SBNow blogging to his 8AM - 5PM weekday schedule, something I, for one, prefer he NOT occupy his taxpayer-funded time with! Please Jim, save the blogging for your free time because, by your own admission: The City's in CRISIS MODE!
Then again, this does prove better than anything anyone could ever write that you really are up to no good/nothing of importance, while Marianne Milligan and other paid city employees have their noses to the grindstone, at their desks, in the courts & out in the community as you pop up here & there to garner the credits for the work others in meetings and in blog entries, as expressly exemplified here by Paula.
Your Friend & Neighbor,
Susana Atanasova
Posted by: Susana Atanasova | October 5, 2007 12:42 AM