Orange County Register

It may be worth noting that the fee paid to attorneys working death penalty cases is some $150 per hour.

Far better, then, to be the strategic communications consultant hired by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, to help shepherd tentative labor contracts to fruition.

Lichtenstein & Associates - doing business as Marathon Communications  - inked a deal with Met in July that pays it $295 per hour, “plus necessary expenses at Consultant’s actual cost without mark-up.” The mission: “To provide strategic communications consulting and counsel in support of Metropolitan’s labor agreements.” (See contract below.)

Marathon pulled down $25,000 in July, and $17,026 in August. (No billings yet for September.) The deal, for up to $100,000, runs through next year.

It may also be worth noting that the labor contracts Marathon was to champion to the public were withdrawn from consideration, after Met’s board signaled its displeasure last month. (The contracts included a pay raise of up to 23 percent over five years, and a pension hike of 25 percent forever. Board members - from SoCal cities and water districts - couldn’t vote for that in the midst of recession.)

Marathon Communications’ job was not to simply respond factually to questions about the contracts, but to mount something of a campaign in their favor. To wit:   Read the rest of this entry »

When we at The Watchdog asked how much has been spent on consultants working on labor negotiations for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, we noted that the biggest bills came from Agreement Dynamics Inc (nearly $300,000 through July).

Agreement Dynamics advocates a kinder, gentler approach to negotiating called “interest-based bargaining.” This produced a controversial labor contract that was withdrawn earlier this month, and sent back to the drawing board - which has given rise to some hard feelings on the part of some employees. 

We asked Agreement Dynamics what their thinking was about the procees now, and where things might go in the future (Met hopes to have a new agreement on the table by February). Here’s the response we got from Rhonda Hilyer, president of Agreement Dynamics:

Thank you for your question about interest-based bargaining at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In my opinion, it’s a very important question because the outcome of this process will have a profound influence on this organization and those it serves.

Having been involved in labor relations for over 35 years, I have never seen unilateral approaches benefit any party over the long run. Interest-based bargaining is more challenging than traditional, position-based methods because it requires all parties to seek mutually-acceptable solutions. Like any negotiations, it can get very turbulent at times.

What will happen at Met? Read the rest of this entry »

The kinder, gentler and much-ballyhooed “interest-based bargaining” process - which produced a controversial labor contract that was withdrawn earlier this month and sent back to the drawing board - will cost the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California more than $300,000 in consultant costs before it’s all done.

Met hired consultant Agreement Dynamics in February 2008 to help keep the peace as it plunged back into labor negotiations with its employee unions, which have proved quite contentious in the past (and, judging by how some employees reacted on Oct. 13, may well prove quite contentious again).

The consultant’s original contract was not to exceed $200,000 and was amended several times, now extending to February 2010 (see contract: agrdynamics).

Agreement Dynamic’s billings through July were $282,093 (see met-billings-to-date), with many thousands of dollars sure to come.

The use of a consultant to help smooth labor negotiations is certainly not unprecedented. However, the much larger County of Orange, which has some 18,000 employees (compared to Met’s 2,000) and some contentious labor history as well, generally negotiates union contracts in-house, officials said.

Met’s attempts at harmonious negotiation don’t come cheap:

• Agreement Dynamics’ head honcho, Rhonda Hilyer, charges $2,500 per day for her services. If you’ve only got a half-day’s worth of consulting for her to do, the charge is $1,500; and if it’s less than that, she bills $250 per hour (and ”less than an hour’s work will be billed at a prorated amount based on 15-minute increments,” the contract says.) Read the rest of this entry »
  

As public agencies across the state are cutting their budgets and laying off staff, the Orange County Water District’s board has approved a 10 percent raise for its general manager.

That means Michael Markus will be collecting $215,000, up from the $195,000 he’s been earning since he took over the job two years ago. Plus, he gets a $15,000 one-time bonus.

Oh, and the pay raise will be applied retroactively to July 1, 2009.

District board member Philip Anthony says Markus deserves the pay raise to reward the hard work he’s put in over his 20 years with the district, including spearheading the construction of a sewage-to-water reclamation system that turn 70 million gallons of treated sewage into drinking water every day.

“It’s a world-famous project,” Anthony said.”He and our district received awards worldwide. He’s done an exceptional, unusually good job. And his job, as is, is a lot bigger than (other water district managers) who make a lot of money.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps  if Abe Lincoln and Robert E. Lee had sat down over a hot cup of joe, history might have been different?

Such is the strategy currently employed in Orange County’s own Water War, which threatens to cleave the county in two and cost more than $1 million. (And all it took was that $100,000 report to get everyone talking!)

You may recall that the Southern Confederacy (i.e., the cities of Laguna Beach, San Juan Capistrano, and San Clemente, as well as the El Toro, Irvine Ranch, Moulton Niguel, Santa Margarita, South Coast and Trabuco Canyon water districts), which use a great deal of imported water, has been threatening to ditch its northern neighbors and form its own water-importing-authority, thank you very much. (See Mutiny ahoy! Southerners may secede from water union, which could cost northerners money and Southern secession from OC water union would waste millions, report says  for more background on all that).

Well, that $100,000 study (water-report, which was received and filed last month, and did not include formal recommendations) weighed nearly a dozen options for the future of the embattled Municipal Water District of Orange County. Most of these options, however, were dismissed as “fatally flawed.”

It’s important here to note that MWDOC’s raison d’etre is to buy expensive imported water from the mighty Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and then sell it to OC cities and water districts, which then sell it to you.  

Of the nearly one-dozen options for MWDOC’s future, only two emerged as feasible:

• keeping the status quo;
• and southern secession.

An election on secession would cost between $1 million and $1.5 million, says the report, by the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).

PRICE OF SECESSION Read the rest of this entry »