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4A – Daily News – Saturday, September 18, 2010 Opinion D NEWSAILY RED BLUFF TEHAMACOUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U N T Y S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Lesson learned Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes let- ters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All let- ters must be signed and pro- vide the writer’s home street address and home phone num- ber. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submit- ted will be considered for publi- cation. Letters will be edited. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 Editor: Defamation of character and libel are closely related. They involve the allegation that the defendant told untruths about the plaintiff, thereby causing the plaintiff to suffer harm. Defamation is the issuance of a false statement about another person, which causes that person to suffer harm. Libel involves the making of defamatory statements in a fixed or medium, such as a magazine or newspaper. The typical elements of a cause of action for defamation are: 1. A false and defamatory statement concerning another; 2. The unprivileged publica- tion of the statement to a third party; 3. If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negli- gence on the part of the pub- lisher; and 4. Damage to the plaintiff. Damages in defamation actions are typically to the rep- utation of the plaintiff. Most jurisdictions recognize "per se" defamation, in which the allegations made by the defendant are presumed to cause damage to the plaintiff. Typically, attacks on a person's professional character or stand- ing may constitute defamation per se. Libel law often provides protection to letters to the edi- tor, but newspapers still can be liable for publishing their contents. Most newspapers adhere to strict guidelines for submission in which personal attacks, defamation of charac- ter and/or libelous or slander- ous material will not be print- ed. I am now fully aware of the Red Bluff Daily News’ stand- ing on this subject after reading two separate replies to my “thought provoking”? letter of Sept. 1. Thank you for your time; this will be the last thing I learn from your paper. Georgia Scott, Red Bluff Your Turn See where tax money is going Editor: I would suggest to Mr. Perry that he read Donald Ward’s letter that is very explicit on where your tax dol- lars are going. Or would you, Mr. Perry, like to volunteer to replace one of those young men who is among those 30,000 that Obama volun- tered to go to Afghanistan? Bob Hogan, Red Bluff Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Jim Nielsen (R), State Capitol Bldg., Room 4164 P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento 94249; (916) 319-2002; Fax (916) 319- 2102 STATE SENATOR — Sam Aanestad (R), State Capitol Bldg., Room 2054, Sacramen- to, CA 95814. (916) 651-4004; Fax (916) 445-7750 GOVERNOR — Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 558-3160; E-mail: gover- nor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Wally Herger (R), 2635 Forest Ave. Ste. 100, Chico, CA 95928; 893-8363. U.S.SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 393-0710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (415) 403-0100. Fax (202) 224- 0454. Who and what can you believe? Commentary There is a lot to scratch your head about in recent editions of the Daily News. For example, in today’s Red Bluff Daily News (Saturday, the 11th) the lead headline states that the Department of Fish and Game; their employees are pre- sumed to be experts, and they assert there are no signs of moun- tain lions in town. This probably brought great relief to the City Councilman, Jim Byrne, who worried about liability issues for the city. He wondered what might happen after that ultimate feral cat, the mountain lion, took care of our local feral cat prob- lem for us. This is confusing because sev- eral reliable citizens had reported sightings over the last few weeks, and only one was unauthenticat- ed by local authorities. Conspira- cy theorists will have a holiday exposing the undue influence on the DFG by passionate environ- mentalists and tree huggers. The rules for dealing with the big cat are clouded by jurisdictional con- fusion, and at this point there is not much most of us can do but smile. UFO apparently now stands for Unconfirmed Feline Observations. In the same edition, it was claimed in a letter to the editor by frequent correspondent Les Wolfe that the President of Iran has been given the red carpet treatment by unspecified public schools. I fact checked this con- fusing statement and could find no record of any public schools, liberal or otherwise inviting the president of Iran to their campus, yet alone obtaining a red carpet to roll out for him. Red carpets are probably not easy to put into a school budget these days. Hats off to staff writer for the Daily News, Tang Lor, who has been building job security by covering the Keystone Cop per- formance at the Red Bluff City Hall. I attended a few social events this last week, and was approached by a few people who wanted to discuss the situation at City Hall and talk about City Council candidates. Our discus- sions reminded me of the famous Thomas Nast cartoon depicting “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall and several prominent New York City politicians standing in a cir- cle, each pointing to the person next to him, in answer to the question “Who stole the people’s money?” Each person is quoted as saying “’Twas him”, the per- son being pointed to all the way around the circle of politicians and influence peddlers. While the comedy of errors and miscommunication at City Hall in Red Bluff may not have a criminal element, the finger pointing is reminiscent of that Nast cartoon, and I thought I might explore the implications of what all the cast of characters are saying. First, let’s start with the per- son in charge of finance. She claims she knew of the budgetary shortfall on St. Patrick’s Day, 2010. She claims she passed this information on to the City Man- ager, in writing during a meeting on that day. She initialed that report and dated it; it is not clear if she used green ink in honor of the day, but she produced a copy of that report for the Daily News, and Ms. Lor has used it in an arti- cle. Secondly, we have the City Manager who does not recollect being told of the fiscal situation on St. Patrick’s Day, nor receiv- ing any written report. He has searched diligently and apparent- ly has not been able to find the memo the financial officer claims to have given him, and he is sticking to his story from this June that the shortfall was a sur- prise to him. City Councilman Jim Byrne continues to complain publically about how he perceives he was treated when he was on the Bud- get Committee of the Council, and the way he feels about how the City Manager runs things. Some would call this airing dirty laundry in public. Apparently he is in a distinct minority on the Council, since the Council, which employees and supervises the City Manager, has apparently not done anything about the com- plaints the singular councilman has made. Other council members are saying the “mistake” was most likely not part of a cover-up or even inten- tional. These are the same members who most likely did not catch the overly opti- mistic income forecasts for the last year, so their judgment may be sus- pect. No one is using the obvious description of what has happened, negligence. If everyone is telling the truth, this problem is more complicated that it may seem on the surface. If all are telling the truth, then the City Manager may be overworked and unable to focus on tasks at hand, things like a million dollar shortfall, or he may have what I seem to have from time to time, short term memory issues, or senior moments. Perhaps either his job performance needs to be reviewed, or perhaps he needs a medical evaluation. Or maybe he didn’t receive the alleged memo. If the finance manager is telling the truth, one wonders why she felt she had to initial and date a memo of which the City Manager has no recollection. Most memos are not chicken scratched, and they have a spot on them to insert a date in the “to-from” section. Perhaps the memo was a spreadsheet copied off the computer and was infor- mal in nature. Informal memos are easy to lose because they look like scratch paper to many. One could wonder why such an important finding would not have been placed in a “formal” memo and put into the correspondence file where a formal record of all correspondence is kept…if there is one. Why isn’t the finance manager allowed to present such a memo to the Council after showing it to the City Manager? Is this another case of CYA? If the Council member who has publicly complained about the City Manager is telling the truth, then he is forgetting that the City Council is supposed to be in charge of city government, and he needs to make sure he completely under- stands that situation. At a minimum the Coun- cil should agree on just what information they need on a regular basis to stay up to date. I have a copy of last Joe Harrop year’s adopted City Budget on my comput- er; it is 188 pages long, but there are some salient summary pages that could be used as a guide to how things are going. A revised esti- mate of the entire 188 pages would be too much for the Council to deal with, but a sum- mary of income by major catego- ry and expenses would be help- ful, particularly if presented by the finance manager who could respond to Council members’ questions at the meeting. At a gathering to celebrate the retirement of Judges Murray and King, at least two people spoke to me about the current dysfunc- tion in our city government. One person hoped the election in November would help the situa- tion by electing responsible, attentive council members with good assessment skills who will see to it they are kept well informed. The name of one of the younger candidates, Tim More- house, came up a couple of times as a possibility. Another person indicated the City Manager and the finance officer should step down, fall on their sword, so to speak. I am sure Ms. Lor will have lots of material to keep her busy over the next few months if she can refrain from laughing too much. Joe Harrop is a retired educator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net.