EDITOR: The muckraking behavior of a local attorney involved in
developing houses on El Toro, a hillside he once vigorously
defended against all development, makes me feel sad. Sad for the
reported targets of his less than ethical and possibly illegal
behavior; sad for the council people who are forced by his behavior
to spend time in his gutter; sad for the taxpayers of Morgan Hill
who are forced to pay $50,000 for an investigation into city
employees
’ behavior outside City Hall. It also makes me sad to have to
take one step further into cynicism, provoked by his change from a
self-righteous environmental attorney to a self-righteous
developer.
EDITOR:
The muckraking behavior of a local attorney involved in developing houses on El Toro, a hillside he once vigorously defended against all development, makes me feel sad. Sad for the reported targets of his less than ethical and possibly illegal behavior; sad for the council people who are forced by his behavior to spend time in his gutter; sad for the taxpayers of Morgan Hill who are forced to pay $50,000 for an investigation into city employees’ behavior outside City Hall. It also makes me sad to have to take one step further into cynicism, provoked by his change from a self-righteous environmental attorney to a self-righteous developer.
Based on the reportage of the investigation as published in recent news articles, Bruce Tichinin hired an unlicensed, self-described bully to develop embarrassing material to use against public officials of the City of Morgan Hill. According to the report the “bully“ may have broken into our city manager’s hotel room to order hot chocolate for two so that the room service bill would appear to be incriminating. The order was wisely refused by the occupant.
The hired bully was supposed to get evidence of an extramarital affair and apparently was under little constraint about whether it was the truth or not. And even if there was such behavior, it’s none’s business anyway.
When the city manager rightfully described the bizarre behavior of his “tail” to the City Council, they had no choice other than to investigate it. It is harassment of an employee and would be illegal and unethical to ignore.
At this point there was a complicating factor. While the entire council voted for an investigation, one of those council members apparently had inside information on these events and refused to offer it. Knowing about who had perpetrated this idiocy, Hedy Chang failed to inform the council.
This failure ended up costing the taxpayers a considerable part of the $50,000 spent to investigate the event. Hedy cited privileged communications between attorney and client as her reason for silence. She was one of Tichinin’s clients, apparently knew about this because of that, and chose not to help the City and its citizens by offering this knowledge. Attorney/client privilege is designed to keep the attorney’s mouth shut, not the clients. Invalid excuse Hedy.
The point of this letter is multifold:
• To commend the council on the sadly needed action. No one likes doing this dirty work, but it had to be done.
• If all this is true, shame on Tichinin for once again taking the self-righteous position that his ends make such evil means OK. Comparing himself to people like Woodward and Bernstein who really investigated for public good is the essence of spin doctoring your dirty laundry.
• If all this is true, shame on Chang for being party to such behavior via foreknowledge and compounding her own failure to act ethically to stop it by failing to reveal what she knew when it became public.
John N. Quick, Morgan Hill
