Who will upzone my greenhouse so I can build high-density apartments?

Jerome Stocks: I swear my $4000 check to the Lincoln Club had absolutely nothing to do with the hit piece they sent out against Teresa Barth four days later

Here's Mayor Jerome Stocks at the Cardiff candidate forum when asked to pledge not to send out last-minute, negative hit piece mailers.


"I've not only pledged that I won't; I will state affirmatively that I never have, and I won't change that now."

Oh, really?

Then why did you pay the Lincoln Club $4,000 four days before they sent out this sleazy hit piece against Teresa Barth in a race that no one in the Lincoln Club claimed to know anything about?

Do Encinitas voters really want a city councilman who will lie to their faces like that? What else is he lying about?

Stocks uses taxpayer-funded survey, tax-exempt charity for campaign propaganda

We knew when the city commissioned its ridiculous "citizen satisfaction survey" in an election year, the purpose was to give the incumbents a political weapon. As if the reason anyone likes living in Encinitas has anything to do with City Hall. Conveniently left out of the survey, by the way, were questions about overdevelopment, unfunded pension liabilities, toxic waste at the Hall Park, crony real estate transactions and city contracts, etc.

I'd say the survey tells us what we already knew: that people love to live in Encinitas and have almost no interaction with City Hall.

So here is the mailer we've been expecting. "Thank you to our city council... for making our city such a wonderful place to live, work, and play. Keep up the good work."

But the new twist is that the group paying for this is a 501(c)3 charitable organization, "We Love Encinitas."

Quoting from the IRS web site on 501(c)3's:

The organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests [...]

Charity money going to send out love notes to politicians during campaign season? Whose interests are served by this at all other than the private electoral interests of Jerome Stocks and Mark Muir?  When, in the history of all municipalities, has a legitimate charity ever been formed to mail out puff pieces on politicians during campaign season?

Think about that: Jerome Stocks' backers are getting tax deductions for sending out what are, for all practical purposes, campaign mailers.  I suspect the IRS will frown on this charade and those involved will face legal consequences.  But even if not, what was Stocks thinking?  On the heels of sign-gate, to serve up another prime example of cutting corners and bending or breaking rules for political gain?  How much more blatant could he be in validating the complaints of his harshest critics?