While the Inyo Supervisors and DWP gnash their teeth and tear their hair over a few thousand dollars to keep Klondike Lake open for week-long use, former DWP manager David Nahai maneuvered a consultant deal to get $6300 a week through the end of the year while he also works for others. Wow. Nahai is one smart cat.

He quit, so he doesn’t have the headaches of responsibility. Just the bucks for consulting. DWP Commission President Lee Kanon Alpert is quoted in the LA Times as saying of Nahai’s deal, “There’s nothing nefarious about it, nothing complex about it. This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that. David’s resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months.”

Others in LA government are in a twist over this, calling it a sweetheart deal. DWP will pay for two executives – Nahai and David Freeman who took over. Of course, Freeman ran DWP before. He’s not clueless.

Unlike our esteemed leaders in Washington. Congressmen and Senators make between $174,000 to $200,000 plus major benefits and retirement. Seems they don’t work too hard for it. An article on Yahoo News says that members usually arrive at work Tuesday evenings and go home on Thursdays. A two and a half day work week? Must be nice. Officials say a longer work week would just add to the backlog of bills. Right.

How about the Mammoth Town Council? Not too swift on the Brown Act. Plus, they need to read Scottish poet John Burns. You know the author of the famous line roughly translated – Oh, the gift the gods could give us to see ourselves as others see us.

We’ve talked to folks in the audience at the Council meeting. One woman said she actually felt sick about how the officials failed to generate confidence and failed to honor open government and the citizens’ views.

This bear riddle requires hard questions put to Fish and Game and the Forest Service. If city council members want the other players to cooperate, lean on them! That’s what your people want you to do. Then maybe members of the public won’t be in your faces so much.

Meanwhile, the Wildlife Subcommittee, according to first amendment lawyers, does fall under the Brown Act and must be open to the public. As John Eastman noted, regardless, why were council members trying to exclude the public?

Did some of the Inyo Supervisors from Bishop forget about the public in their personal adoration of the military? We all support our troops and our amazing service men and women, but hey, county supervisors are elected by local people who have expressed concern over low flying jets and broken windows in Lone Pine and Independence.

One Lone Pine woman offered a solution. “My suggestion “, she wrote, “How about some jet passes over Bishop?”

Talk about complaints over airplanes. One of our listeners shared with us that All Nippon Airways in Japan will ask passengers to visit the restroom before boarding. They think empty bladders will mean lighter passengers and require less fuel, reducing carbon emissions. What’s next? No clothes and no luggage – just Zip on in the buff and stop global warming? Yikes.

We’ll all end up naked if the State keeps up with the money grabs. This week Inyo County Auditor Leslie Chapman revealed to the Supervisors that starting November 1, the state has bumped up state withholding taxes by 10%. That means workers will lose a little more of their paycheck thanks to the State’s emergency measure to find more money for the failing government.

Officials who fail cost us a lot.

With that, this is Benett Kessler signing off for Bureaucrat Beat where we await your word on our lives in the Eastern Sierra and beyond.