“I have not accepted any money from Athens. Not this election, not the election before this, nor the time before that!”
– Doug Tessitor, March 05, 2011, in the comments beneath Hazel Lodevico-To’o’s Glendora Patch article“I have not taken a dime from Athens trash, ever,” said Tessitor.
– March 08, 2011, as reported in Hazel Lodevico-To’o’s Glendora Patch article“None of us have taken money from Athens. Period.”
– Mayor Joe Santoro, November 12, 2013, Glendora City Council meeting
OK, guys. I’m not sure why it would be such a big deal if you did, as plenty of southern California lawmakers take campaign contributions from Athens: but if you are going to repeatedly make these kinds of denials, they ought to be true without qualification.
The problem here, as reported on March 14, 2011 by Hazel Lodevico-To’o in the Glendora Patch, is that:
“Although he noted that he did not accept money from Athens Services, Tessitor did receive a $200 contribution from Athens CEO Gary Clifford.”
Now Clifford is no doubt a friend to Tessitor; Clifford lives in Glendora and used to sit on the Glendora city council himself until he left before the last election in order to focus on his new job with Athens. So it isn’t surprising that Clifford gave Tessitor $200. Technically, to be sure, this donation wasn’t from Athens die-rectly. And technically, Tessitor never did get a dime; he got a check for $200.
But here’s some free advice: if you are going to repeatedly deny you got money from Athens, you might want to mention the contribution from its Chief Operating Officer / Executive Vice President so you don’t look like a liar and get the gadlies a-buzzin.’ After all, one of the reasons Athens Services comes up in Glendora political life is not only because of the dispute over whether they should put their contract with Athens out to bid, which it doesn’t look like they are going to do, but also because ex city councilman Clifford resigned from his position on the council after taking on an executive position with Athens.
It’s not so easy to discover the contribution from Clifford to Tessitor. Curiously, Doug Tessitor’s campaign contribution form listed on the city of Glendora website as “01/01/11 – 06/30/11” in fact only covers 2/20/11 to 6/30/11. The form covering 1/23/11 to 2/19/11 is not linked to publicly at the Glendora campaign statement web page from what I can see. Although the city website does not seem to link to it anywhere, it is hosted on the city website here if you have the address.
As it turns out, it is this very missing form that includes one of three recent trash related contributions I have found thus far: the aforementioned $200 contribution to Tessitor from Gary Clifford of Athens Services. Maybe it’s an honest mistake, but it does give one pause. Two out of the three documents with contributions from trash companies (in this case, each one is from Athens) are not linked to on the city website.
I find it unlikely that this is the only Athens related contribution that Tessitor has ever received, but who knows. He seems pretty adamant about it even as he praises the company, and there is no reason to doubt him until proven otherwise.
Trash Talk 