De La Fuente Boldly Sells Failure as Success

City council president and mayoral candidate Ignacio De La Fuente has distributed an endorsement letter signed by councilmember Pat Kernighan and past councilmember Danny Wan.

They write, "Ignacio has a unique strength that all successful mayors must have – the ability to focus on the big issues while doing what is necessary to improve local neighborhoods." Let's forgive the self-contradictory writing: a strength that all successful mayors must have cannot be "unique" to De La Fuente, unless the world has never seen a successful mayor.

Kernighan and Wan's very first example claims, "Ignacio has led efforts to restructure the police department to get more police on the streets. He helped craft Measure Y, increasing the number of community policing officers in Oakland neighborhoods." (See the letter here, in Acrobat format.)

Can you believe it – bringing up Measure Y as a De Le Fuente success?

• When the council proposed Measure Y taxes in July 2004, Oakland had 734 police officers. We are paying those taxes, but instead of gaining even one additional officer, as of May 1 we had 694 officers. That's a loss of 40 police. To make it worse, current training academies have less than three dozen trainees. The City is likely to have fewer than 734 officers for the rest of 2006. The 802 promised by Measure Y are a continually receding mirage.
  
• Despite the letter, Measure Y did not result in an increase of community policing. The police department just ordered all community policing officers to spend one day in five, 20% of their time, working ordinary patrol. That's per official order; in reality, community policing officers are diverted from their work even more.
  
• The claim that De La Fuente led efforts to get more police on the streets is half-baked at best. The council made noises at one or two sessions this past February and March when they could not ignore the historic "Enough Is Enough!" movement. But De La Fuente and the council left 27 officers under-used at the airport. Apparently, they could not bear to give up $5 million a year paid by the Port authority, even though Measure Y brings in $20 million a year.
• De La Fuente participated in the sales job that pushed through Measure Y, based on an insistent, repeated commitment that Oakland would get a total of 802 officers. However, as soon as the measure passed and the tax money started coming in, De La Fuente and other councilmembers mocked the idea of hiring 802 police.
  

Measure Y is the poster child for the city councilmembers' disregard of public safety, bait-and-switch sales jobs, and endless series of parcel taxes that do not deliver. It takes a lot of nerve for mayoral wannabe De La Fuente to distribute an endorsement letter that cites Measure Y as an accomplishment.

What will he write next?

– May 25, 2006