Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-The more Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean C. Logan screws up our elections, the more taxpayer money he is paid. That’s government for you.
But with Logan’s latest election screw-up, instead of rewarding him with more salary and fatter public pension, it’s time to end his tenure in LA; the one which in 2018 paid him an astounding $364,358 in salary plus benefits of $58,714 for what I call a “C.C.C.,” or Completely Corrupt Compensation of $423,072.
Logan mucks up every primary and election in which we rely exclusively on him to make voting fair, organized and reliable.
On Super Tuesday 2020 – or as Joe Biden referred to it last week, Super Thursday – Logan once again was the architect of preventable chaos not just for the presidential primary, but for local and immediate elections like LA City Council, LA County Supervisors and voting matters of greater importance to more than 10 million people in LA County.
At locations no longer serving as voting places, instead of redirecting constituents to the nearest polling place, a single, barely visible sign was posted telling people to call Logan’s agency so they could find out where to go.
Perhaps in the future that phone number will be answered by real people. It was utterly unhelpful on Tuesday.
For those who were able to go online and find the nearest polling station, there was no way to be sure that they could actually vote there. Others who miraculously found the right polling place, where some candidates lobbied inside the premises, people waited in snake-like lines for hours to just get into the building. Then there’s the chaos that “curbside voting” caused in jam-packed parking lots.
Apparently, if you wanted to vote curbside, you had to park, go inside and have an election official come outside. Some people abandoned their vehicles in red zones and kinda/sorta tried to do that to no avail.
It’s time for the LA County Supervisors to call Mr. Logan into their offices and suggest that he take up real estate or, as they say, retraining opportunities in another field that might better match his skillset.
Logan also fails in many other ways that are off the radar for most of Los Angeles County.
For instance, the exposés you read in this column sometimes rely on access to records from his agency, but there is no doubt that public record requests have been leaked by his staffers, which the agency denies despite breathtaking coincidences.
At other times, Logan’s office has thrown roadblocks in my path like when I asked for clarification on his agency’s rules for publishing records he maintains, and I was repeatedly told by his staffers to check with my attorney, except that I didn’t ask for legal advice; I asked for what the agency’s rules were. I asked for clarification on what I agreed to do and/or not do with the records.
In short, Logan’s agency continues to fail to fulfill its mission. And the fault is on his grotesquely overpaid shoulders.
So let’s revisit his track record. . .
In 2017 this column showed that Logan was in the dark about some extremely dangerous people who worked for his agency at elementary school polling locations.
In 2018, I exposed Mr. Logan’s functional failures and called for his termination.
And a week later, I revisited how poorly Logan did in his job in Washington State, when Seattle talk show host Dori Monson said, “Dean Logan stole ’04 governor’s race, and he’s at it again in California,” and explained why Logan is the “least qualified election executive in the United States.”
Along the way, Logan’s LA profile and salary grew, because our local incumbents almost always promote failure and incompetence.
So I will say it again, with different words: LA democracy can no longer be sacrificed for what amounts to Logan’s $423,000 internship. Let him go today. Whoever serves as his second-in-command couldn’t do worse as we head toward November.
Enough excuses. Fire Dean Logan now. It’s 2020 for chrissake and voting in LA is worse now than ever.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion, Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photo: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
