Re “On the 50th Day, Malsin Returns to the Sparring Ring”
During his brief hiatus from public life, once and perhaps future City Councilman Scott Malsin has been monitoring political activity in City Hall as meticulously as when he held office.
Take the Redevelopment Agency crisis.
He was thickly involved in the City Council’s furiously fast and so far successful effort throughout last year to protect the city’s/Agency’s assets in the event Sacramento succeeded in putting the rehab specialists out of business.
Mr. Malsin resigned from the Council on Dec. 12, just 2½ weeks before the state Supreme Court affirmed the dissolution of the Agencies as of last Tuesday night.
One Regret
“We (Council members) did a lot of planning over the past year for every contingency, up to but not including this one,” Mr. Malsin said this week in the midst of his re-election campaign. “It was something we were aware of. Murray Kane (the city’s legal counsel) said on several occasions that the decision handed down on Dec. 29 was a real possibility.
“I regret very much we didn’t spend time planning for this. I absolutely recognize this is something I should have been cognizant of as much as anybody.”
After the Chamber of Commerce conferred one of its four endorsements for the April 10 election on Mr. Malsin he was talking about how good it felt to be back on the playing field. “I am very passionate about the city,” he said. “I am very into policy issues and the city’s progress and prosperity.
“It was great to have a chance to talk about those issues with the Chamber board.”
Mr. Malsin was asked about whether he felt obligated to delineate on the campaign trail why he left office in December, in the middle of his second term, to retain the status quo of his city-provided family healthcare benefits, and then applied for re-election the next month.
“Absolutely,” he told the newspaper. “It certainly is amore than fair question. As a matter of fact, we put information up on our campaign website (http://scottmalsin.com) that explains some of the facts.
“It is pretty clear there are a lot of aspects of my situation and the Council’s situation that people are not aware of.
“It’s very interesting what I say to people. I point out basic details.”
Mr. Malsin was asked to summarize his reasons for leaving and returning.
“The rules were changed on my family and me,” he said. “We wanted to protect what we were qualified for under rules that had been in place for decades.
“I was the only Council member faced with that choice because of the length of time I had served.
“Just so people do understand, if I had stayed on the Council, I would have been entitled to (only) coverage for myself.
“Rather than just paraphrasing it, if people will go to that page on my website, ‘About Scott’s Resignation,’ I would rather they do that because I have had the time to say it clearly.”
Mr. Malsin’s campaign website is http://scottmalsin.com
