By John Earl
Surf City Voice

After being sworn in last Monday for his first term on the Huntington Beach City Council, Joe Shaw, who is openly gay, said he wasn’t surprised that he was elected.

“When I first came to Huntington Beach with my then partner eight years ago,” he reminisced in his acceptance speech , “we opened a business downtown and at once we were warmly embraced by the people of downtown, our customers and people from all over the city.”

Shaw says he and his partner were accepted “unconditionally and without judgment” and that “I looked at this beautiful city and its wonderful people and knew I had found a new home.”

Surf City does offer domestic partner benefits for city employees, but its citizens also reelected Dana Rohrabacher, one of the most homophobic representatives in Congress, by overwhelming vote margins for the past several decades.

Rohrabacher opposes marriage, adoption and military enlistment rights for openly gay or lesbian adults and he favors amending to the Constitution to define marriage as an act to occur between men and women only.

Rohrabacher’s anti-gay views might not be openly shared by most of his Surf City constituents, but they still hold sway in Orange County Republican politics and, at least indirectly, in Surf City politics.

One of the main reasons that the Orange County GOP didn’t endorse Barbara Delgleize—who lost fourth place in the city council election to Shaw by a handful of votes—is that she supports the right to same-sex marriage, according to reports in the Republican blog Red County, including one written by OCGOP Chairman Scott Baugh.

Robert Gentry, who served on the Laguna Beach City Council 1982 – 1992, was the first openly gay elected official in Orange County, but Shaw is the only one currently holding office in the county.

Shaw will concentrate on being the “best councilman I can be,” not the “gay city councilman,” he said. But he believes that his victory should provide hope to others.

“I must acknowledge it,” he said, “because it will make a difference in many peoples’ lives to know that this is possible in Huntington Beach and Orange County. It does get better.”

Lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgendered people want the same things in life that everyone else does, Shaw said, explaining the broader significance of his victory. “We want good schools, safe and well maintained streets, clean water and air, and abundant open space,” he said.

For his first-term priorities, Shaw hopes to tackle the city’s tough financial problems. “First, we have challenging financial conditions ahead of us. We have made some difficult cuts and will likely have to negotiate more. I intend to be fiscally prudent without harming our ability to provide our essential services,” he declared.

Not harming “essential services” is the obligatory mantra of even the most hawkish fiscal reformers on the city council, and those services are usually defined as police, fire and infrastructure, which includes just about everything a city government provides.

Protecting those services won’t be easy under the ongoing recession—likely to be exacerbated by plans to cut a $25 billion state budget deficit and federal tax cuts for the rich proposed by Obama and the new Congress—with little hope for state or federal bailout money for cities across the country.

Shaw’s goals for Surf City’s future are optimistic, however, including a proposed 25-year mobility plan designed to accommodate future development with alternative modes of transportation, “including buses, trollies, trains and bike ways.”

Shaw seeks to develop a more sustainable city by encouraging projects like the Community Garden set to open soon in the southeast portion of the city and he will try to encourage new business creation through deregulation, making sure that “all of our citizens are treated as valuable customers by the city.”

Shaw also announced that he will reappoint Blair Farley to the Planning Commission. Farley, who narrowly trailed Delgleize in the election, campaigned with Shaw and co-victor Connie Boardman as part of Team Huntington Beach.

Photo: Arturo Tolenttino for the SCV

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Joe Carchio sounded bitter but said he doesn’t care if he gets reelected to the Huntington Beach City Council or not. “If people don’t want me to be a councilman, then fine; I don’t care, I don’t care, I really don’t care,” he recently told the Voice.

According to Carchio, his performance on the council has been second to none going back a century. “I have given more to this city than any other councilman that was ever here,” he declared unequivocally.

Carchio spat those sour grapes out near the end of a recent (Sept. 26) interview with the Voice, an interview that he had tried for a long time to avoid; before it was over, he had complained that this reporter was dishonest, untrustworthy, driven by a vendetta and no longer his friend.

He also issued a threat.

Carchio's $50,252.24 federal tax lien for upaid taxes in 1994 and 1995.

This reporter was attacking him and his family, Carchio alleged, because of my supposed ties to local community groups that opposed his past council votes in favor development on the upper Bolsa Chica mesa and in southeast Huntington Beach, and he wouldn’t put up with it.

“If you’re going to start a war, you’re going to start a war,” he warned. “You’re going to start a 9-11 with me, John.”

Under pressure from a Voice investigation of his past business practices and misuse of public employee benefits, Carchio had confessed that he is not married and had kept his ex-wife enrolled on his city paid health care plan even though she was no longer eligible—the latter being an “honest honest mistake,” he said.

That mistake had cost the City’s taxpayers $2,782.73 for 19 months of care. The overpayment ended when Carchio cut his ex-wife from his health plan (except for vision coverage which came without extra premiums) last March; but, as reported exclusively by the Voice, he didn’t pay back the money until six months later—three days after the Voice inquired about his divorce status.

Carchio promised to make a tell-all statement to the OC Register the next day (Sept 27) explaining what happened. “I’m going to the Register tomorrow…I got the whole thing laid out. I’m going to tell them. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Then, showing a bit of remorse, Carchio said he would take the heat for what he did and hinted that a public apology would be forthcoming.  “In a statement that I’m going to put out, I will take the heat. I am so sorry,” he said.

Eleven days later the Register hasn’t published anything about the topic and there are no signs of a public apology or statement of any kind. In fact, there was no sign of Carchio himself at a candidates’ forum on Monday, Oct. 4, and it was rumored that he wouldn’t be attending the debate to be held this Thursday (10/7/10) at the Huntington Beach Central Library. Read the full story

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a 3 part story

Since 1957 a vote of the people has decided who would be the Huntington Beach City Attorney. Since 1978 no incumbent holding that office has lost an election. Gail Hutton, who defeated incumbent city attorney Don Bonfa in the city election that year, easily remained in office until her retirement 24 years later in 2002.

Her replacement, Jennifer McGrath, was elected to the office next with 48.2 percent of the vote in a race against three opponents, but she ran unopposed in her 2006 reelection campaign.

Next November she will have one opponent listed on the ballot, T. Gabe Houston, who officially signed his candidate’s papers at the City Clerk’s office on Aug. 6, the last day to file.

Council member Devin Dwyer. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino for SCV

Like other City Attorney challengers, Houston may also end up as election fodder. But his late entry reveals a serious flaw in the Huntington Beach City Charter—despite nine months of work by the City’s Charter Review Commission that recommend reforms—and exposes the hidden attempts (and not so hidden attempts) by various  members of the Huntington Beach City Council to gain political power by manipulating the reform process for better or worse.

Previously, the Voice showed how the council’s backroom political dramas have come to center stage at city council meetings. But recent e-mails obtained by the Voice give a sharper picture of the passion and acrimony flowing through the political veins of the city.

Some of the conflict centers on the office of City Attorney. One side wants the city attorney to be elected by vote of the people; the other side thinks that he or she should be appointed by the council or the City Administrator. Read the full story