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Photo credit: Still from this video by Nate Imhoff, who along with Julie Olsen and Mike Cruz, was an invaluable help in putting the original Winkler stories together.
It was one year ago last week that the Saugus USD board voted to oust board member Stephen Winkler after determining that he wasn't a resident of the district, which is required by law. This week, the district got word that it can finally declare Winkler's seat vacant and go about replacing him.
It all started with a bang last year when we exposed Winkler's online activity. It was all there: Nazi sympathies, racism, animal torture fantasies and a bizarre obsession with children riding dogs. It was shocking, sickening stuff for sure. You might have think it would be enough to cause him to resign, but even the condemnation of the rest of the board wasn't enough. Winkler dug his heels in.
It the interests of being thorough, I left no stone unturned. As I was asking around, I kept hearing whispers of "residency." People would say "no one knows where he lives." His official address changed several times in little more than a year. One address was non-existent.
A routine check of prior court cases revealed two very recent restraining orders. My friend took a trip to the courthouse to get copies, and dropped them off just hours before the board's special meeting. And what would you know? Two restraining orders describing his living situation and declaring his residence in Sylmar, signed under penalty of perjury.
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At the meeting, I asked Mr. Winkler about his home in Sylmar and he explained, quite comically, that it was his weekend house meant for sleeping after nights of drinking. Over the next few days, the district's P.I. followed Winkler and found that he was indeed living in the rented room in Sylmar.
The next week, the board took swift action and removed him from office on a 4-1 vote.
Because this happened during a short window that would have required his seat to be filled during the November election, the County got cold feet and wanted the district to go through a more formal process first. The district was told to obtain a quo warranto, which is explicit permission for the CA Attorney General to pursue Winkler's removal in court.
Some months passed, and the AG granted the QW and SUSD took Winkler to court. The district served Winkler a few months back, and the court never received his response. This allowed the district to ask for a default judgement, which is a mechanism that gives the plaintiff in a case an automatic win if the defendant doesn't show up.
This district got their default judgement and this week they got the final word that the case was closed. Winkler is finally gone.
How did he get here in the first place?
So where do we go from here?
The district can appoint a replacement or call a special election. Either way, the replacement will hold the seat until 2015.
It's common for vacancies to be filled after soliciting applications from the public and interviewing candidates. But the board can also cut straight to it and appoint a person of its choosing. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it would be interesting.
We have the added wrinkle of fellow board member Doug Bryce's pending resignation, which he's said will be made official once he's finalized his move to San Diego. Bryce's seat lasts until 2017, but if they appoint a replacement, they'll still need to hold an election for the last two years of that seat in November of 2015. If they fill the seat with a special election, the winner will serve all the way to 2017.
If you take that plus the very real possibility that the district will have a bond measure on the November ballot, it might make sense to at least put Bryce's soon-to-be-vacated seat on the ballot.
The district also has the looming cloud of a possible CVRA suit. The only way they can fully inoculate themselves from a CVRA suit is to move to district-based elections.
But what's ahead is far less interesting that's what's behind, and this week we get to finally close the book on one of the most bizarre and interesting stories in recent SCV history. For the sake of the Saugus Union School District, and especially its teachers (to whom Winkler was especially nasty), I'm glad to see this tale end with a tidy, happy ending.
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