MID Mailbag Brings Us Featherbedding at the MID
By Emerson Drake 
Over the years our MID Mailbag has produced very interesting results that have become stories, like the bastardized ‘smart meters’ MID purchased that were defective requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars (of our money) to set right. But in the past year we’ve come across some items that need to see the light of day.
When Greg Salyer was allowed to step down as MID’s General Manager and retain his same salary of $236,188, eyes were opened. His new title of Assistant General Manager, second in pay only to the newly hired GM seemed excessive for a position created by Mr. Salyer for himself. In the last year we’ve received ‘concerns’ from staff that they see no input or leadership coming from Salyer and are wondering how long the farce will be maintained.
After receiving numerous complaints internally regarding the inexperience and lack of performance of an Engineering Tech Supervisor last year, management finally made a move and D.W. was sent toddling off the Woodland Generating Station. But in MID’s usual fashion a position is now listed internally. A position that was eliminated years ago because it was no longer needed. But in the best of MID’s traditional featherbedding style (Featherbedding is the practice of hiring more workers than are needed to perform a given job) MID has resurrected the job and will offer it to D.W. at double his paycheck all for a special project.
Towards the end of last summer we kept hearing how then Turlock Mayor and MID employee Gary Soiseth had stopped showing up for work at MID while still cashing his paycheck. It all came to a head on September 7th when Soiseth resigned rather than potentially being fired. Apparently, and unknown at the time to the rest of us, this was the first of the behind the scene maneuvers by John Mensinger, Paul Campbell, Stu Gilman and MID General Manager Scott Furgerson.
By the October 23, 2018 Board meeting it became obvious these four had conspired into trying to hire Gary Soiseth as a consultant through Gulaco with a salary increase from $132,579 to $216,808 and for doing basically the same job he had been doing, when he was actually showing up, for MID.
So when concerns were expressed by other Board members that Multiple Brown Act violations had occurred in recent months it wasn’t a surprise.
Multiple Public Record Requests have been delayed for months. The current regime is reverting back to Tom VanGroningen and Allen Short days. These were the the exact opposite of the clean transparent days from Nick Blom and Larry Byrd.
For MID employees wanting MID to be run as a public business and not a personal empire you can express your concerns by email to westernpalms@aol.com
Oh yes and Paul, are you going to get a discount from John on all that lumber you’re thinking about needing?
Eye On Modesto 