Have Secret Sacramento Union Funds Entered Atherton Politics?

 From: Colleen Anderson
Date: Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:17 pm
Subject: Fwd: Have Secret Sacramento Union Funds Entered Atherton Politics? 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Save Our Park <saveathertonspark@gmail.com>

Subject: Have Secret Sacramento Union Funds Entered Atherton Politics?

Date: November 2, 2012 4:10:12 PM PDT

To: lovemypaws@yahoo.com

Reply-To: saveathertonspark@gmail.com

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Is the SEIU, a public employee union, secretly funding the KUPPERMAN and the YES on F Campaigns to win itself fully-protected library jobs in an over-sized library in our park?  WHAT WE KNOW:   The YES on F and KUPPERMAN Campaigns have produced a blizzard of campaign materials, blanketing Atherton with dozens of mailings per household.  The barrage of political consultant-style mailings have raised considerable alarm among those fighting to protect the park and keep the library appropriate for Atherton. CONCERNS:    With campaigns "valued" at well over $35,000 each, where could the funding for all these materials be coming from!  Could YES on F or KUPPERMAN be using reserved JPA Library Tax Funds? WHAT WE KNOW:   From the recent disclosures, YES on F reported nearly $23,000 in expenses and total contributions of $6,875 (less than 30% of what they've spent), yet they have paid only $33, less than .15% of their costs!  The KUPPERMAN Campaign (with all the same materials and maybe more) reported less than $3,000 in total expenses and contributions of $6,500, and one payment of $857! CONCERNS:   Who would extend these groups so much credit?  How can KUPPERMAN's costs be $20,000 less than those of YES?  Why weren't those costs reported by Kupperman and who is going to pay all these huge campaign costs? WHAT WE KNOW:  The KUPPERMAN Campaign: 1)  paid for ads in the Almanac, 2) hired a Sacramento-based accountant, and 3) borrowed money from her husband to pay for beverages, office supplies and postage.  Yes on F Campaign: 1) got Almanac ads, 2) hired Duffy & Capitolo, a Sacramento-based political consultant and 3) hired Lowercase Productions, a graphic designer but paid nothing for any of these services!  That is virtually all that is reported! CONCERNS:   The reports leave big gaps in required information: clearly more is going on with the professional campaign materials evident from both groups. Could funding somehow be coming from the San Mateo Co. Library staff who worked so closely with Kupperman on the Atherton Library Building Steering Committee? WHAT WE KNOW:  It turns out that San Mateo Co. Library professionals are members of a public employee union, called the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, based in Sacramento.  We learned that Duffy & Capitolo does work for the SEIU, including the SEIU's campaign on AB 438.  The purpose of AB 438 is described as follows: to make it as painful as possible for localities to withdraw from a county library system in favor of more cost-effective private management. The bill lets a city contract for library-management services only if no city or library employees would be "displaced." Librarians couldn't even be transferred from one library branch to another, much less laid off. Another provision would mandate that the private operator provide compensation that does not "undercut city or library district pay rates." This controversial bill was passed after a year of intense lobbying effort by the SEIU, starting in 2010.  The San Mateo Co. branch of the SEIU had their own campaign called "Our Libraries Are Not for Sale" to fight privatization.  Atherton is one of only a few towns in San Mateo County with excess library funds.  2010 is when the Atherton Council initially rejected the Library JPA staff's (and therefore SEIU's) recommendation to triple the size of our library and move it to the Park. CONCERNS:   San Mateo Co. Library staff's recommendation that Atherton build a larger library than what the town itself needs constitutes a conflict of interest and deserved vetting that it hasn't gotten. Residents raised concerns and complaints about being excluded from the decision-making, so why didn't our informed council member McKeithen and committee Chair, Denise Kupperman, try to help them? Why were residents attacked instead?  Did the San Mateo Library Staff get the SEIU to secretly put its financial weight behind KUPPERMAN and YES on F to finish the job that the Library JPA staff started, without disclosing their conflicted roles in the whole process?  Is this why Kupperman fails to mention the library issue and hides her central role on the committee in her materials and only talks about keeping Atherton "Safe and Beautiful?"  WHAT WE KNOW:  Denise Kupperman and Kathy McKeithen have fought the right of residents to make the decisions about their own library. McKeithen vacates her majority seat this term.  If elected, Kupperman will inherit that majority on a council divided between those who would force a library into the park and those who care to represent residents. If residents want to determine what library services they fund, be it school libraries or digital technology before they go ahead and build another big structure and fill it with books and librarians, we need representatives who are not allied with the SEIU.  Combined with AB 438, YES on F and Kupperman will checkmate the ability of Atherton residents to bring rationality to the ever increasing amount of funding used for the library even as budget shortages force us to outsource all other town services-including our Police. CONCERNS:  We pulled these facts together so late but if you haven't voted yet, please VOTE NO ON F and NO to KUPPERMAN. Our library, our park and our town depend on it!