Last week, my mom received an email from Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert, sent in his official capacity as a county supervisor. In the email, Haubert strongly criticized SB1193, a bill introduced by State Sen. Aisha Wahab to require Alameda County supervisors to approve discretionary spending by a majority vote of the full board. Wahab argues this bill would increase public transparency.<\/p>\n
Haubert has the right to say whatever he wants about a bill that affects his official powers. But his public opposition to it was less shocking than his email\u2019s mention that Melissa Hernandez\u2019s congressional campaign was endorsed by a majority of Alameda County supervisors, including Haubert.<\/p>\n
Hernandez is a high-ranking employee in Haubert\u2019s county office, as the email footer noted. She is also running against Wahab for Congress in a district that overlaps with the area Haubert represents on the Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n
Which raises an important question: did David Haubert use taxpayer-funded government resources to send electronic communications to his constituents that could have the effect of influencing a federal election?<\/p>\n
My mom, the most apolitical person I know, concluded that Wahab\u2019s bill would harm the community and that Hernandez was therefore more deserving of a seat in Congress. Having read the email myself, as someone who spent years working on political campaigns, I can see why she drew that conclusion from the email alone.<\/p>\n
Now imagine how many other people drew the same conclusion because our county supervisor blurred the already-thin line between government communications and campaign rhetoric.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know whether Haubert broke any laws by sending this email. Still, if this email isn\u2019t corrupt and unethical, then I don\u2019t know what is. This is a betrayal of the public\u2019s trust, and the Tri-Valley deserves better from this so-called public servant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, my mom received an email from Alameda County Supervisor David Haubert, sent in his official capacity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[5445,157623,75057,8762,143,145,144,41304],"class_list":["post-391747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda","tag-congressional-campaign-ethics","tag-david-haubert","tag-government-transparency","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-public-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}