Need new leaders in Concord to end project cronyism

Earlier this year, the master developer chosen for the massive Concord Naval Weapons Station project bailed after the City Council refused to shield the company from trade unions’ excessive demands for labor concessions.

It’s the second time a developer has bailed on Concord because it couldn’t deal with the city’s backroom politics. It should have been an embarrassing moment for the council. The loss of the master developer sets the $1 billionplus project, which covers an area half the size of the city of Pleasant Hill, back nearly seven years, when Concord officials started the laborious selection process.

Then, last week, came the jaw-dropping moment when Concord City Councilwoman Carlyn Obringer, who joined the unanimous decision to let the deal collapse, told us that she should be reelected because she had “a track record of problem-solving,” and had “protected the community vision for a world-class project at the Concord Naval Weapons Station.”

It wasn’t the community’s vision she and her colleagues were protecting; it was her construction-union supporters’ delusional expectations.

Obringer is the only council member up for reelection this year who faces a challenger. Residents in District 2 deserve a representative of their interests who can fairly and independently balance competing factions — unions and developers — and is not beholden to either.

Elect Hope Johnson

That’s why voters should oust Obringer and replace her with Hope Johnson, a smart and articulate candidate seeking to end the city’s specialinterest politics. Of the field of four candidates, she is the standout. The other two candidates — Paul Wood, regional manager for a dental services company, and clinical psychologist Harmesh Kumar — are nowhere near as conversant and clear about what the city must do to right itself.

Johnson, a paralegal who grew up in Concord, recognizes the importance of government transparency after serving on San Francisco’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force when she previously lived there.

She has carefully followed the city’s seriously eroding finances, which have been undermined not only by the coronavirus economic downturn but also eye-popping pension debt that has gone unaddressed for a decade.

She recognizes that the City Council overreached with its proposed budget remedy, a permanent doubling of the city sales tax on the Nov. 3 ballot. As for the weapons station project, Johnson is clear that city officials should not be pawns for any special interest.

City’s prior fiasco

The loss of the master developer, Lennar, is not the first debacle for the project. Indeed, Lennar should have never been picked. The selection process had been tainted from the onset.

The original plan had been to narrow the field to two firms and then let them compete in a transparent process. But then-Councilman Tim Grayson took campaign contributions from Lennar associates, a form of lobbying prohibited under the selectionprocess rules. Meanwhile his political consultant, Mary Jo Rossi, meddled by telling a competing firm, Catellus, that it could improve its chances if it aligned with local developers.

Grayson also sought political advice from Willie Brown after the former San Francisco mayor had just made a pitch on Lennar’s behalf. Concord’s reputation for sleazy maneuvering was further reinforced when City Manager Valerie Barone schemed in illegal private meetings with council members to withhold the staff recommendation favoring Catellus.

The backroom tactics were too much Catellus, which withdrew from competition, leaving only Lennar.

Later that year, 2016, when Obringer first ran for City Council, she said, as we did, that the council should have restarted the selection process when the abuses were uncovered. But for all her sanctimonious protestations, she endorsed Grayson, the most ethically challenged council member, in his successful bid for state Assembly. It was clear then that Obringer’s first allegiance was to her political allies, which include labor unions.

Unions’ overreach

Then came this year’s fiasco. For construction on the weapons station site, the building trades unions wanted to lock in union wage rates for infrastructure such as utilities and public buildings, a so-called project labor agreement like those that have become increasingly common in California. But the unions also wanted to expand the agreement to include lockedin wage rates for residential homes in the project — what would have been unusual and a vast overreach.

The labor unions kept insisting that Lennar had agreed to the same terms for its San Francisco projects. It’s a claim Obringer parroted during her interview with us last week. But San Francisco is an entirely different housing market and that city has contributed redevelopment tax income that’s not available in Concord.

Lennar said the unions’ residential demands would have sucked up all the company’s potential profits, a claim corroborated by the city’s independent consultant. The council was unmoved. So, Lennar is out, and the city must restart its search for a developer.

For that, Concord needs not only fresh developer applicants, but fresh city leaders. Electing Johnson is a good place to start.