Eye on the East Bay: April fool’s
Contra Costa Times
Posted:   04/06/2014 12:00:00 AM PDT
April fools: Richmond Councilman Tom Butt is a prolific writer, known to churn out thousands of words per week on his website, commenting on city policy and lobbing barbs at his political rivals. In addition, the 70-year-old architect hits a winner every April 1.
This year was no exception. Butt had residents abuzz on social media with his story, "Breaking News -- Mayor Announces Eminent Domain Mortgage Seizures to Begin Tomorrow Morning in Richmond," which he cannily dated March 31. Butt proclaimed the city " ... will finally implement the controversial program starting at sunrise ... A fleet of hand-picked process servers, fueled with free coffee provided by Catahoula, will fan out from Richmond City Hall at exactly 7 a.m. Tuesday to serve legal papers on the various banks servicing underwater 'zombie' mortgages in Richmond."
The city's eminent domain plan has garnered headlines for months and prompted bondholders to preemptively sue the city but has languished without a supermajority support on the council.
Like a cartoonist who embellishes everyone's peccadillos to freakish comic effect, Butt announced the "ecstatic" Mayor Gayle McLaughlin "cobbled together a creative and brilliant workaround that has finally come to fruition," forming a secret Joint Powers Authority with another city to bypass the recalcitrant council. The city attorney, Butt wrote, helpfully greenlighted secret meetings.
Butt wrote that the sensational developments sent his council rivals into a tizzy, even prompting Councilman Nat Bates to call President Obama, whom Bates befriended at a Christmas Party. Councilman Corky Boozé "launched into a 30-minute rant about some unrelated issue," Butt wrote, and Councilman Jim Rogers was "wracked with indecision."
Butt sat back and savored the chaos he'd wrought.
"Hooked her," Butt wrote in an email, no doubt while grinning, noting he had received an urgent request from a local reporter for comment on the faux news.
Apparently, many readers didn't get to the end of Butt's farcical piece de resistance.
The last line read, "I wish you a happy April Fool's Day!"
Staff writers Denis Cuff, Paul Burgarino, Robert Rogers and Tom Lochner contributed to this column.

See Breaking News - Mayor Announces Eminent Domain Mortgage Seizures to Begin Tomorrow Morning in Richmond, March 31, 2014