Why I’m Endorsing Barry Pruett

I don’t endorse political candidates all the time, but once in a while I get asked to. In this case, I didn’t even get asked – but recent events in the news made my decision for me. (For those of you who don’t live in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California, feel free to skip this post if it bores you!)

Nevada County has had a long history of drama in its Clerk-Recorder’s office. This is an important and critical function in county government. They protect your identity when you get a birth certificate, wedding license or death certificate. They manage the safe transfer of property between buyers and sellers. And they protect the foundation of our representative democracy by running our elections.

The Clerk-Recorder before this one, who was appointed to the job, made a bunch of idiotic mistakes in the process of running elections. Then it was discovered that she was moonlighting for another city two hours away and collecting double salary.

Fortunately, she resigned. But her replacement, a fellow I’ve never met named Greg Diaz, has continued the drama. He’s gone through four assistant recorders in the last fifteen months. And in the last couple of weeks, a new story exploded on the scene: Greg Diaz is now the only County Clerk-Recorder in the state being sued in federal court for fraud.

More on that in a second.

Barry Pruett, who is a local attorney and former small business owner, decided to run against Diaz many months ago, before the lawsuit was filed. He made that decision because he was witness to some highly questionable actions that Diaz took, which have now been documented in a story that appeared in The Union yesterday morning.

I met Barry back in 2008. He and his wife Kim were supporting Tom McClintock’s campaign for Congress (as was I). He’s a good guy and I’ve always been impressed by him. He owned a local gymnastics/athletics business before he got his law degree. Before that, he did a stint for an Apple Computer spinoff in Russia as Director of Business Development. He’s sharp, professional, communicates clearly and always exhibits a boatload of common sense. As I stated earlier, he hadn’t asked me to endorse him, so the thought hadn’t occurred to me.

Until now.

As many of you know, I’ve spent a great deal of time as a Sierra College Trustee working on the issue of keeping our tax dollars local. I spent a year and a half working with the Nevada County Contractors Association to create a level playing field for the campus expansion and renovation project at NCC, and making sure that a local team had the chance to bid for the work.

That effort wasn’t required by law, but it was the right thing to do, because it creates jobs here, in our community. By some accounts, because of the effort we made at Sierra College to keep our tax dollars local, we generated a $35 million dollar stimulus into the local economy. I was honored to be a part of that effort.

So when I see a local elected official doing exactly the opposite, it stops me in my tracks.

According to this news story, Nevada County has had a relationship with this local company for ten years, costing $377,000. The local company serves numerous counties all over California and the nation. They’ve since been replaced by an out-of-state company with costs estimated at $714,000 for ten years.

If you cut through all of the fluff in the story, here’s the bottom line: Diaz didn’t like this local company. Apparently they sent his office a letter and addressed it to his predecessor. So he cut them out of the bidding process. (This isn’t the first elected official to have an ego this big. Not cool.)

Diaz claims he didn’t oversee who was included in the requests for proposal. I can’t understand this. As the guy in charge of this decision, how can you NOT be involved in knowing who you’re asking to bid? It raises serious questions as to whether or not he’s engaged in his job or not. His claim doesn’t hold water.

The local company, who at the time had Barry Pruett as their attorney, raised the issue, and were told they could submit a bid. They got half the time to prepare their bid, and Diaz decided their presentation wasn’t quite as nifty as the others.

So Greg Diaz gave the contract to a higher bidder – the out of state firm – choosing their $357,000 proposal over the local firm’s $303,000 bid.

Unbelievable!

The story continues. About five months ago, Barry stopped representing that local company. They went and hired other lawyers, and believe that Diaz handed trade secrets to their software over to the out-of-state company with the higher bid to give them an unfair advantage. So now they’re suing the county and Greg Diaz for fraud.

Now, I’m told there’s no way this will all get rectified or the local company will get their contract back. That’s not the point of Barry’s decision to run.

But it’s simultaneously amusing and disturbing to think this whole episode might have been avoided, and all of this taxpayer money saved, if only the Clerk-Recorder wasn’t ticked off by a bad mail merge in a form letter.

Our local small businesses are struggling to make ends meet, fighting to preserve and create jobs for our taxpayers. We need all the help we can get from our elected officials to support our local economy. To have an elected official actively working to hinder local job creation – well, that person isn’t going to get my support. They’re just not qualified to hold office.

So for what it’s worth (and I’m the first to say it’s not worth all that much!), I wholeheartedly endorse Barry Pruett for Nevada County Clerk-Recorder. He’ll end the drama, bring professionalism to that office and support our local economy, small businesses and local jobs.

Update: After checking with Barry, it is more accurate to describe RUI Apple Computer as an overseas Apple spinoff, so I’ve done so. I don’t think it makes a material difference for this post, but accuracy is always important.