Otay Water District Board’s Blatant Abuse Doesn’t Stop at Employee Benefits

Guest Column
by Chris Shilling

With the recent highly controversial votes to approve lifetime healthcare benefits at the Otay Water District for all employees and their spouses, the attention has finally turned to Otay’s board of directors. This is long overdue as this board has spent the last decade squandering ratepayer money while increasing water rates to pay for their waste and abuse of power.

I am Chris Shilling, the Democrat who ran for the Otay Water Board Division 1 seat that covers the eastern half of Chula Vista in the 2010 election. My platform was simple: Stop the 80 percent rate increase, end the waste, and finally give the ratepayers a voice on the board. With the odds stacked against me I mounted a six months long grassroots campaign that only fell short by a little more than 2,000 votes, despite going up against tremendous odds, deep pockets, and some truly shameful campaign tactics by the opposition. Although I am a registered Democrat, our water is not a partisan issue. I am very proud to say I had a broad base of support across all party lines. Clean affordable water and financially sound ethical governance are issues that impact us all.

As the votes to approve lifetime healthcare benefits despite almost universal disapproval demonstrates, all of the members of the Otay Water Board (four Republicans and one Democrat) have turned a blind eye to the people they were elected to represent and instead have displayed unparalleled arrogance. These lifetime benefits (and the board’s continued misrepresentation of the real financial impact) are deeply disturbing, but what really shocks the conscience is the staggering amount of ratepayer money spent across the border.

The Otay Water Board has entered into contracts with the Cayman Islands Water Company, with a company in South Korea, and other entities to “provide” water from a desalinization plant to be built in Mexico. The board has been sending large sums of money into Mexico chasing this “opportunity” for some time now. Even if this plant were to actually be built, the contract calls for the water the plant produces to first go to the people of the Baja and their needs. Once that is satisfied, then 50 percent of the remaining water is to be shipped across the border for the Otay Water District to use. Water in this form is not covered under NAFTA (only bottled water), or any other treaty, and will never be approved by the Federal government. Yet the Otay Water Board is still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money on a lobbyist, who just happens to make large donations to at least one of the member’s campaign accounts.

After the 2010 election, Otay Water board members personally attacked me and attempted to destroy my credibility by filing a complaint with the Chula Vista Board of Ethics, of which I am a Commissioner, alleging misconduct on my part. The complaint was summarily dismissed at the earliest probable cause stage because it lacked any merit and was full of blatant lies and misrepresentations. One example was Board President Jaime Bonilla’s attempt to label me as an outright racist, despite the fact that during my campaign I was endorsed by both Mary Salas and Juan Vargas, who were in a very heated race for State Senate in the South Bay, as well as the Chicano Democratic Association.

Water nullifies all political objections because it is essential to all of us. The Ethics Board found that bringing voters’ attention to the very real issues occurring at the Otay Water District is not “racist behavior.” The Otay Water Board continued its pattern of wasting ratepayer money by paying to have present at the Ethics Board hearing General Manager Mark Watton, two board members (Jaime Bonilla and David Gonzalez) and the Water District’s attorney of record. All of these men were being paid by us, the ratepayers, to sit through this meeting where the Otay Water Board itself had no standing. During the hearing while the lawyer and Board President Bonilla were being questioned by an Ethics Commissioner, it was uncovered that Otay board members had blatantly violated the Brown Act in bringing forth the complaint. The matter was referred by the Board of Ethics Commissioners to the District Attorney’s Office, but District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and her Public Integrity Unit have failed to act on the matter.

While our water rates continue to skyrocket the board spends. General Manager Watton is the highest paid water district manager in Southern California. He makes over $300,000 per year, has close to a $100,000 travel budget, and enjoys 71 days of vacation. He was an 18-year Otay board member but resigned because he said he did not like the direction the board was taking the District. He was then strangely hired as Otay’s general manager even though his experience was in owning a few failed businesses; he also only has a high school education. Due to his 18 years on the board he was grandfathered into the CalPERS retirement system at his general manager salary, meaning it cost the ratepayers over a million dollars just to hire him.

Add in these facts:

• The district has been forced to settle employee discrimination lawsuits to the tune of $1.1 million dollars (read here and here).
• Otay has been forced to negotiate settlements for an inspector who was caught taking bribes and allowed a recycled water pipe to be hooked up where the potable water should have been.
• The revelation that Board Members Jose Lopez and Gary Croucher’s water usage skyrocketed while water rates were rising and people were being asked to conserve.
• As a radio station owner, Board President Bonilla has been fined by the FCC at least twice for blatantly disobeying regulations (read here and here).  There have also long been media references to Bonilla being banned for life from professional baseball in Mexico (see Article 17) for fixing games and other rule violations; Bonilla appears to have never denied those stories.

All of this adds up to a board (including former member Larry Breitfelder, for almost eight years) that has been out of control for a decade, and the ratepayers have paid the price.

Our water rates have increased 40 percent since 2009. We are already halfway to the 80 percent I forecast would occur over the next four years. Board President Bonilla has vowed to continue coming after me for exposing what is really going on behind the curtain; however, my integrity will not allow me to turn a blind eye when I know there are wrongs being committed. As I stated before, this is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, it is a community issue. I hope that we can all come together during the next elections to do what is right for the ratepayers and for our communities.

I am not aware of any candidate running against either Jaime Bonilla or Jose Lopez. Whoever does run will need a lot of support on the ground and financially as these are very well-funded candidates. I give my pledge to support any and every viable candidate who has ethics and integrity and will serve the people.

Chris Shilling is currently a San Diego Business Consultant and owner of the technology based marketing firm CLS Interactive Marketing (www.CLSInteractiveMarketing.com). He serves as the vice chairman of the Chula Vista Board of Ethics and lives in the Eastlake area with his wife Brandee, three children, and their new puppy Flash. You can follow him on twitter at @Chris_Shilling.