As we enter the homestretch for the June 2nd election, Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung has had a perfect storm of bad headlines that could spell trouble for his candidacy. For starters, former Fullerton Councilmember Jan Flory took Jung to court, challenging his ballot title and statement, saying the claims Jung made were false. Jung claimed “businessowner” as part of his ballot title, he claimed to have taken Fullerton’s $9 million budget deficit and balanced it, and he claimed to have built 9 parks in Fullerton. The court deleted these claims from Jung’s statement, prompting the Fullerton Observer headline “Judge Rules Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung’s Ballot Statement False and Misleading”. With the Andrew Do scandal fresh in people’s minds, the last thing a candidate for County Supervisor needs is a judge finding he is having trouble telling the truth.
Then came the Fullerton City Council meeting on March 17th. Staff presented a budget update to the council and acknowledged several million dollars in the General Fund reserve really belonged to special funds, so they had to withdraw millions from the General Fund to put the dollars into the appropriate special funds. It had the effect of severely depleting the General Fund reserve, prompting headlines such as “How Cooked is Fullerton’s Budget” and “$10,000,000 Misdirected; Budget Crisis Suddenly Gets Worse” . As the Mayor of Fullerton, stories about Fullerton’s budget woes are an indictment of Jung in the minds of voters.
While the city of Fullerton struggles with a budget crisis, residents might hope their elected leaders are grappling with the challenge in a thoughtful, respectful manner. Putting it charitably, that is not what they are seeing at city hall. In a video that has gone viral, Jung is shown presiding over the council meeting consisting of insults and accusations. The finger pointing and blame shifting prompted another negative headline “Fullerton Plays Hot Potato With Budget Crisis”.
Reporters writing about Fullerton’s budget crisis naturally seek a comment from the mayor, and Mayor Jung’s response has been consistent: he wants to raise taxes. Jung was purportedly courting Republican voters in his campaign for supervisor, and his repeated calls for higher taxes has obviously jeopardized that plan. Jung’s calls for higher taxes prompted an editorial in the Orange County Register entitled “Fullerton wants to tax public to fix dumb mistake” with Jung’s picture beneath the words “dumb mistake”.
Self-inflicted wounds like false claims in your ballot statement, poor management of the city in your current job, bad luck, call it what you will, but it’s hard to think of a candidate for office with a worse 3 weeks than has befallen Fred Jung, and the bad stories may not be over. Even if he gets the tax increase he wants, it won’t go into effect until 2027. The next fiscal year starts July 1st, so Jung will vote on a budget soon without this additional tax, which will obviously be a very austere budget. It could prompt another round of stories in the press about the poor shape of Fullerton’s budget and contentious council meetings.
