FLASHREPORT

     Each member of the governing majority on the City Council of Rancho Santa Margarita ought to be spanked.

     They sure need to come to their senses somehow.  Orange County Register head gossip columnist Frank Mickadeit wrote last Friday that the RSM council, less dissenting and sterling Republican Steve Baric, is planning to kick freshman Republican councilman Jesse Petrilla off the council because he will miss 6 meetings this spring as he was called to active duty in his military reserve job for just 115 days at Fort Knox, Kentucky, presumably to train and also help guard the nation's gold reserves.


     The rumor, according to Orange County's version of Hedda Hopper, Mickadeit, is that Petrilla is to be replaced with one of the candidates he defeated in last November's general election, who is cozier with the majority than Jesse.

     There is precedent for such an action, but it hardly is supported by just a three month deployment as in Petrilla's case.  In 2008, the Sunnyvale City Council appointed an "interim" City Councilmember to replace Councilmember Otto Lee, who was ordered to report for active military duty with the U.S. Navy for one year as part of the "Boots on Ground" program in Iraq.  In that case, the City Charter allowed for declaring Lee's council seat vacant after he missed two months of meetings, unless the Council provided an "excused absence"; but a Federal and a state law, Military and Veteran's Code Section 395.8, also provides that a legislative body may appoint a temporary councilmember to replace a member that has been called to active duty.

     In 2009, the Chula Vista city council was also faced with the deployment of Councilman John McCann to Iraq for a year, and appointed an interim councilmember until McCann returned and completed his service on the City Council.

     I can see putting in a temporary replacement for a full year of service for someone going into harm's way in Iraq.  However, in the RSM case, Petrilla is not leaving the country, he is simply going to Kentucky for three months to guard our nation's gold supply.



     Having served a term on a City Council myself, it doesn't seem to me that a general law city like Rancho Santa Margarita really has any such pressing business that requires it to declare Jesse's seat vacant in order to appoint an interim replacement for just 6 meetings in three months, and certainly not one that Petrilla might disagree with on issues.  And the RSM majority could easily alter their meeting schedule to shave that down to just 4 missed meetings.  Therefore, why go through the effort to remove Petrilla for just a few meetings when the law allows him to reclaim his seat anyway?  It seems to me that if there are any controversial votes during Jesse's active service, that the RSM majority would be doing a disservice to the people that elected them, and Jesse, too!  The temporary appointment in this case just smacks of some sort of "monkey business" that will be right up Mickadeit's journalistic alley in future.